To confirm this hypothesis that pol

To confirm this hypothesis that polymer flow and preferential transport diffusion that favors anisotropic grain growth, one has to consider occurs at pellet edges. Because fluids cannot go through die walls, it must escape from the top and/or bottom part of it. Therefore, microstructure must be affected by such fluid flow modification. We observed the microstructure evolution along pellet’s fracture from the center to the edge. Figure 5 shows SEM images obtained on a fractured sample containing 5 wt.% PTFE. Figure 3a shows a large view of the pellet from the center to one edge, and figure 3b-d show corresponding zoom-in images represented by red squares. As discussed previously, microstructure in the center of the pellet shows a strong anisotropy with preferential direction lying in-plane. However, when observing closer to the edge of the pellet, the orientation of grains turns towards vertical axis. This is visible on the microstructure observation on figure 3d showing grains almost vertically aligned (grain orientations are represented by dotted lines on various placed, figure 5a).