Order and Dielectric Relaxation During Polymer Crystallization

In the recent years Broadband Dielectric Spectroscopy (BDS) has been shown to be a powerful technique to investigate crystallization in complex fluids including liquids and polymers. Particularly attractive is when scattering and diffraction experiments are combined with dielectric spectroscopy during crystallization in real-time. In this chapter we will review the application of BDS to the study of polymer crystallization emphasizing those aspects related to the combination of X-ray scattering techniques, rendering information about the crystalline phase, with BDS providing information about the amorphous phase dynamics. In addition, we will show as well that both the α-relaxation and the β-relaxation can be used for probing polymer crystallization especially when they appear simultaneously and well resolved in the experimental frequency window. Although most of the applications of BDS to polymer crystallization involve thermal treatments we will show that BDS can be also used when other magnitudes like pressure, shear or strain are involved in the crystallization process.