Surface detachment from polyethylene crystals

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Abstract
During recent work on polyethylene crystals (Keller and Bassett 1960, Bassett and Keller 1961 a, b) a method has been discovered for detaching from a multilayer crystal those parts of layers forming the external fold surface (the surface layer, see fig. 1). Thus is done by ‘fixing’ the crystal surface by the evaporation on it of a carbon layer and then dissolving away the unfixed part of the crystal under controlled conditions to give what we propose to call a detachment replica. In a more advanced form, the technique permits the dissolution of only the thinner layers of crystals leaving thicker ones attached to the detachment replica. These effects alone provide a useful new tool for investigating crystalline polymers. In addition, however, the crystal layers of the detachment replica diffract electrons as do polyethylene single crystals. Thus it is now possible to remove the exposed surface layer of a thick specimen and to conduct diffraction studies upon it revealing orientation information which has so far been inaccessible to any other technique (Keller and Bassett 1960).