Abstract: The non-isothermal crystallization kinetics of virgin ethylene-octene copolymer (POE), dicumyl peroxide (DCP) crosslinked POE, and silane crosslinked POE and were studied using differential scanning calorimetry at different cooling rates. Avrami and the Mo methods were applied to describe the crystallization data. The values of half-time of crystallization t1/2, and the parameter Zc estimated by Avrami method showed that the crystallization rates of virgin POE and DCP crosslinkeded POE were higher than that of silane crosslinked POE at the same cooling rate. For all the samples, the crystallization rate increased with increasing cooling rate. With Mo method, it found that the F(T) values of virgin POE and DCP crosslinked POE were lower than that of silane crosslinked POE, indicating the latter possessed the lowest crystallization rate.

Key words: ethylene-octene copolymer, non-isothermal crystallization, crystallization kinetics, silane crosslinked