Crystallization kinetics of polypropylene containing a sorbitol nucleating agent

We carried out isothermal crystallization experiment for isotactic polypropylene (iPP) containing 1,3:2,4-bis(p-methylbenzylidene)sorbitol (PDTS) as a nucleation additive. Avrami analysis for iPP/PDTS systems showed that the Avrami exponent decreased from 3.5–4 to 2 with decrease of the crystallization temperature Tc only by 4 °C, being contrasted with iPP, where the exponent was 4 for all Tc. This study shows that the iPP/PDTS crystallization kinetics and its temperature sensitiveness were determined by the competition between two events: PDTS network growth and iPP crystallization.