Critical Strain for Shish-Kebab Formation

Abstract

A combination of extensional rheological and in situ synchrotron radiation small-angle X-ray scattering (SR-SAXS) measurements was introduced to investigate critical strain ε* for shish formation and validate whether coil−stretch transition or stretched-network is responsible for shish-kebab formation in high density polyethylene melt. With strain rates ε̇ larger than a specific value, the critical strain ε* required to induce shish formation turns out to be a constant of about 1.57, which ensure full extension of chain segments with critical entanglement molecular weight locked between two adjacent entanglement points. The results clearly demonstrate that the formation of shish-kebab in polymer melt stems from stretched network instead of coil−stretch transition.