A comprehensive investigation of the origins of surface roughness and haze in polyethylene blown films

In an earlier publication we showed that the optical haze properties of blown and cast polyethylene (PE) films were adversely affected (i.e., haze increased) as a result of enhanced surface roughness caused by the formation of distinct optically anisotropic “spherulitic‐like” superstructures. In this report we have found that for a very wide variety of PE blown films, the total haze percent exhibited a complex parabolic relationship with the logarithm of the recoverable shear strain parameter, γ ∞ . At low values of γ ∞ , superstructures were developed (as discussed in our previous report) that increased surface roughness and hence total haze. As γ ∞ increased, such superstructures were either significantly diminished in size or altogether absent, giving rise instead to an oriented, row‐nucleated, stacked lamella texture that decreased surface roughness and hence total haze. However, at even higher γ ∞ values, representing highly melt elastic behavior, fine‐scale surface roughness due to high melt elastic instabilities was induced, thereby increasing surface roughness and consequently total haze as well. It was demonstrated in this work that two PE resins could exhibit the same level of total haze as a consequence of two completely different mechanisms or origins. Furthermore, we believe that this is the first time that both very low and very high melt elasticity have been shown as primary causative factors in yielding high haze in PE blown films, albeit for fundamentally very different reasons. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 85: 2396–2411, 2002