12. "Spherulitic morphology and growth of PVDF and PHBV blends by optical microscopy". Qiu ZB,* Fujinami S, Komura M, Nakajima K, Ikehara T, and Nishi T. Polymer 2004; 45: 4355-4360.
Poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) and poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV), both semicrystalline polymers, are miscible as shown by the single glass transition temperature over the entire composition range. Morphology of PVDF/PHBV blends was investigated by optical microscopy under two different crystallization conditions. PVDF showed the spherulitic morphology at 150 oC in the PVDF/PHBV blends, where PHBV acted as the noncrystallizing component. PHBV also showed the spherulitic morphology within the matrix of the pre-existing PVDF crystals when PVDF/PHBV blends were quenched from the melt to the crystallization temperature below the melting point of PHBV. The spherulitic growth of PHBV was investigated as the function of both blend composition and crystallization temperature.