Uniaxial orientation of linear low density polyethylene

Only a few reported studies have involved the uniaxial orientation of LDPE and even less on LLDPE. It is our purpose to report on characteristics of uniaxially oriented films of LLDPE that contribute to property development. The LLDPE has been coextruded at 25 and at 80°C layered as ribbons within longitudinally split billets of HDPE. The LLDPE so drawn was characterized by thermal analysis, birefringence, elastic recovery, and wide angle X‐ray measurements. As a result, we can conclude that the drawing of LLDPE at the lower temperature produces a relatively high content of monoclinic crystals; the orientation behavior of LLDPE is similar to that of HDPE. The molecular network formed by entanglements and crystals reduces the draw to a maximum below 15.