My advisor and collaborator was Dr. Jerold M. Schultz , C. Ernest Birchenall Professor of Chemical Engineering. Download my dissertation. This is a PostScript file compressed with WinZip. View my dissertation using Acrobat Reader. The main thrust of my research was the study of bundle formation during the crystallization of polymer blends.
Polymers typically crystallize from the melt state into thin lamellar crystals.
These crystals have a tendency to grow in stacks. In pure polymers, these stacks can be very large. However, in impure polymers or polymer alloys in which there is a large fraction of material that cannot crystallize, the size of the lamellar stacks is reduced. The size of these bundles and regions which separate them are important because they affect the mechanical properties of the polymer. There has been much debate in the literature over the conditions and mechanisms which lead to the formation of bundles.