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The technique of Thermo Stimulated Creep (TSC) has been applied to the study of anelastic properties of polyethylene, polypropylene, their copolymers and blends. In the temperature range −200 to 100°C, complex TSC peaks were observed in all samples, namely around 0°C, about the same temperature as for the homopolypolymer polypropylene. By applying “fractional stresses”, with a convenient choice or the loading program, these peaks have been experimentally resolved. Two components can be distinguished: 1. The “low temperature” component is characterized by mechanical retardation times following a compensation law. It has been attributed to microbrownian motions of polypropylene sequences liberated at the glass transition of the “true” amorphous regions. 2. The “high temperature” component which is influenced by thermal treatment has been assigned to microbrownian motions of polypropylene sequences liberated at the glass transition of the “constrained” amorphous regions. In block polymers, an additional TSC peak is observed around −50°C: it has been associated with the glass transition of ethylene‐propylene‐rubber (EPR) interphase. The coupling of this interphase with polyethylene and polypropylene phases is insured by diffusion of some ethylene and propylene sequences in‐EPR. At about −140°C, a TSC peak associated with the low temperature component of the glass transition of polyethylene can be distinguished in all the materials studied.

We achieved a thermal sampling scanning of the β-relaxation region of polypropylene (PP) block copolymers together with the β process of isotactic polypropylene, high-density polyethylene, propylene-ethylene rubber, and part of the PP bloc copolymer soluble in xylene and insoluble in ether. The comparison of activation parameters determined in the above relaxations confirmed the hypotheses drawn from complex spectra studies concerning phase separation and the origin of dielectric relaxations in PP block copolymers. One of the dielectric relaxations of the part of PP block copolymer soluble in xylene and insoluble in ether could be attributed to polypropylene blocks. We related the preexponential factor of the relaxation time to chain environment. Then we discussed the compensation phenomenon in distributed relaxations and the relation between the compensation temperature and variation of thermal expansion coefficient through the compensating relaxation.

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