Paradigm on the Growth Kinetics of Lamellar Polymer Crystals

Growth kinetics of lamellar polymer crystals is the holy grail topic in the crystallization mechanism of polymers.There exist so far many controversial arguments, but only three of them have derived the kinetic equations of the linear crystal growth rate at the lateral front of lamellar crystals: Lauritzen-Hoffman model, Sadler-Gilmer Model and the intramolecular crystal nucleation model. Three equations hold however similar forms. This fact reveals the long-existing paradiam during the development of these three models.The latest intramolecular nucleation model provides interpretations to those unique kinetic phenomena of polymer crystallization, such as the origin of chain-folding, the determination of fold-length, molecular-length segregation, sequence-length segregation, three-regime transitions, linear concentration dependence, and self-poisoning growth with integer-folding of short chains.