• Korea-Australia Rheology Journal
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.135-141
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• 2009

Effect of activation energy and crystallization kinetics of polyethylenes (PEs) on the dynamics and stability has been investigated by changing rheological properties and crystallization rate in film casting process. The effect of changes of these properties has been shown using a typical example of short-chain branching (SCB) in linear polyethylenes. SCBs in linear polymers generally lead to the increase of the flow activation energy, and to the decrease of the crystallization rate, making polymer viscosity lower in the case of equivalent molecular weight. In general, the increment of the crystallinity of polymers under partially crystallized state helps to enhance the process stability by increasing tension, and lower fluid viscoelasticity possesses the stabilizing effect for linear polymers. It has been found that the fluid viscoelasticity plays a key role in the control of process stability than crystallization kinetics which critically depends on the cooling to stabilize the film casting process of short-chain branched polymers operated under the low aspect ratio condition.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.673-679
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• 2011

Bimodal high-density polyethylenes with different comonomer type and content were synthesized by polymerization of ethylene using Ziegler-Natta catalyst. Their structure and properties were studied using GPC, NMR, DSC and tensile test. It was found that ethylene/1-hexene copolymer exhibits higher tensile strength and elongation at break than that of ethylene/1-butylene copolymer with similar comonomer content. The molecular weight decreases as the comonomer content of the polymer increases. Short chain branching affects the crystallinity and thus the morphology and consequently the mechanical properties of the corresponding bimodal high-density polyethylenes. After SSA treated, the multiple endothermic peaks were observed. Multiple endothermic peaks are mainly attributed to the heterogeneity of ethylene sequence length and lamellar thickness. The difference of broadness index indicates that SCB distribution of polyethylene containing higher comonomer content has improved uniformity.