Eur. Phys. J. E (2008) 27: 357-364
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2008-10385-4

Regular Article

Study of temperature dependence of crystallisation transitions of a symmetric PEO-PCL diblock copolymer using simultaneous SAXS and WAXS measurements with synchrotron radiation

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, 300072, Tianjin, China
² Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 130022, Changchun, China
³ HASYLAB at DESY, Notkestraße 85, D-22603, Hamburg, Germany
⁴ Department of Chemical and Macromolecular Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong

^* e-mail: scjiang@tju.edu.cn

Received: 8 April 2008
Revised: 15 July 2008
Accepted: 9 October 2008
Published online: 19 November 2008

Abstract

The reversible transitions of the lamellae of a crystalline-crystalline diblock copolymer from the melt to crystallites were studied using simultaneous small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) measurements with synchrotron radiation. A symmetric poly(ethylene oxide)-poly( -caprolactone) diblock copolymer was chosen for this study. We showed in the course of the block copolymer crystallisation that the time-resolved integrated intensity I _int was proportional to the product of the volume fractions of the PEO and PCL phases and the scattering contrast due to the electron density difference. These results demonstrated that simultaneous SAXS/WAXS measurements could be used to monitor the crystallisation process in two domains of different sizes at the same time.