Strain-induced crystallites and temperature-induced crystallites in poly-isoprene by 2D WAXD simulating analysis

New insights into the Strain-Induced Crystallization (SIC) and Temperature-Induced Crystallization (TIC) of un-vulcanized Natural Rubber (NR) and synthetic polyisoprene rubber (IR) have been obtained using a novel two-dimensional simulation method that calculates a Wide-Angle X-ray Diffraction (WAXD) pattern. WAXD pictures have information on not only structure of unit cell but also, size of crystallites. Conventional one-dimensional profile analysis from the integration of 2D WAXD pictures to determine crystallite information tends to be inaccurate due to very broad peak shapes that lead to difficult identifications of exact scattering angles of crystal peaks. This new two-dimensional approach leads to more precise values for integrated intensities and diffraction peaks, and can generate more accurate estimates for the crystallite size, percent crystallinity, as well as the preferred orientation. The calculated WAXD patterns were compared with the experimental obtained WAXD patterns.