Ms Shouyu Chen published No. 122 paper in our group, appearing in CrystEngComm, 2013, 15, 5464–5475
We are grateful to the editor and the reviewers of CrystEngComm, who carefully read our long manuscript and supplementary information, and who provided the very positive evaluations on our work.
It is more admirable that these reviewers showed their very right knowledges about the scientific development of research, this is what we should learn and this is what some other reviewers has never learned and will not be able to learn in their whole life. What a pity for these poor guys!
Can spherulitic growth rate accelerate before impingement for a semicrystalline polymer during the isothermal crystallization process?
Shouyu Chen, Yaqiong Zhang, Huagao Fang, Yunsheng Ding and Zhigang Wang
CrystEngComm 2013, 15, 5464–5475.
Isothermal crystallization processes in the temperature range from 110 to 140 °C were studied by using polarizing optical microscopy (POM) for poly(L-lactide) (PLLA) film samples with and without confinement conditions. The PLLA film samples were prepared by melt pressing between two cover glasses to provide the surface confinements and by removing the top cover glasses or by solution cast to keep the top surface free of confinements, respectively. Through carefully following the changes of spherulite radius with crystallization time, it is surprisingly found that there exists an acceleration of spherulitic growth rates at the late stage following the normal spherulitic growth rates at the early stage of isothermal crystallization for PLLA film samples with both surface confinement (by cover glasses) and planar confinement conditions (by aggregation of adjacent spherulites to form “lake-like” regions) at certain temperatures, while the spherulitic growth rates remain constant at each isothermal crystallization temperature for PLLA film samples without the confinement conditions. On the basis of data analyses on the spherulitic growth rates under various conditions from several different aspects, it is finally concluded that the decreases of glass transition temperature induced by crystallization under confinement conditions during isothermal crystallization of PLLA film samples cause the peculiar spherulitic growth rate acceleration at the late stage.