Effect of sorbitol templates on the preferential crystallographic growth of isotactic polypropylene wax

The crystallization of isotactic polypropylene wax (iPP) in the presence of different sorbitol structures was studied. Dibenzylidene Sorbitol (DBS), as well as two of its derivatives with one or two methyl groups in the DBS molecule (MDBS and DMDBS, respectively), were tested as nanometer-size fibrillar templates. The early nucleation stage and crystal morphology were analyzed in Real-Time Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS) and polarized optical microscopy (POM). It was found that the iPP crystals showed an α-phase unit cell for the three different sorbitols. However, a preferential crystal growth in the plane (040) was observed for iPP–MDBS. The macrostructure morphology of the iPP–DBS and iPP–DMDBS wax compounds was spherulitic, while nodular macrocrystals were observed for the iPP–MDBS compound. It was concluded that the MDBS template promoted a lower interface energy because of its match with the c-axis of the iPP wax crystals, whereas, in the case of the DBS and DMDBS templates, the preferential plane was the (110), characteristic of the iPP spherulitic arrangement.