Melt memory effects on recrystallization of polyamide 6 were studied in a length scale from nm to lm using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and depolarized light scattering (DPLS). The memory effects on recrystallization rate were discussed in terms of the incubation period before nucleation and the half time of the crystallization, which were measures of the nucleation rate and the growth rate, respectively. Both rates are almost independent of the annealing temperature of the melt in the remelting process for the short term annealing below $ 3 min while they are slowed as the annealing temperature increases for the long term annealing, showing that the relaxation of melt mem-ory takes very long even above the equilibrium melting temperature T 0 m . Extrapolating the incubation period to infinite annealing, time we found that it was very hard to attain the fully relaxed state in polyamide 6 even above the equilibrium melting temperature. This must be due to the strong hydrogen bonding in polyamide 6. We also discuss the memory effects on the final structure after recrystallization based on the SAXS and DPLS profiles.

Measurements of fundamental magnetic properties including not only dc and ac susceptibilities but also magnetic aging effects have been performed for aluminoborate glasses with high concentrations of iron and rare-earth R 3+ ions (R = Sm, Gd, and Tb) in order to give an insight into the magnetic structures and interactions in amorphous oxides containing both 3d transition metal and 4f rare-earth ions, which manifest magnetic interactions that differ from each other. We demonstrate that the antiferromagnetic interactions between iron and rare-earth ions as well as those between iron ions play a significant role for their magnetic properties, while those between rare-earth ions are of little importance. Most of the rare-earth ions remain paramagnetic even below the spin-freezing temperatures under the strong molecular field caused by the spin-glass freezing of the iron ions, as in the case of rare-earth garnet ferrites.

No abstract