Nanofibrillar Single Polymer Composites of Poly(ethylene terephthalate)

Abstract

Using the experience gained from the development of polymer–polymer nanofibrillar composites (NFCs), an attempt was undertaken to manufacture PET single polymer nanofibrillar composites. For this purpose polypropylene (PP) was removed by selective extraction from a knitted textile manufactured with PP/PET (80:20 by wt) blend. The remaining PET nanofibrillar textile was then sandwiched between lower-melting PET films and compression molded at 120 8C. The obtained PET single polymer NFCs comprised PET nanofibrils as reinforcement and showed an improvement in the tensile strength and modulus of 37–100 and 40–140%, respectively (depending on the annealing temperature after compression molding and the test direction) compared to those of the starting isotropic matrix film.