Molecular basis of the shish-kebab morphology in polymer crystallization.

In the rich and long-standing literature on the flow-induced formation of oriented precursors to polymer crystallization, it is often asserted that the longest, most extended chains are the dominant molecular species in the "shish" of the "shish-kebab" formation. We performed a critical examination of this widely held view, using deuterium labeling to distinguish different chain lengths within an overall distribution. Small-angle neutron-scattering patterns of the differently labeled materials showed that long chains are not overrepresented in the shish relative to their concentration in the material as a whole.