Abstract:

In order to achieve the development of industrial scale of ethylene-tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) copolymer fibers, ETFEcopolymer as-spun fibers were prepared by spinning, and  were stretched by and electronic tensile machine at 150 °C to obtain fibers with the stretch artio of 100% and 200%, respectively. Thermal properties, crystal structure and mechanical properties of fibers were researched by thermogravimetric analyzer (TG), differential scanning calorimeter (DSC), X-ray diffractometer (XRD) , dynamic mechanical analyzer (DMA) and electronic tensile testing machine, respectively. The results show that the thermal decomposition temperature of ETFE copolymer is about 477℃. The melting temperatures of fibers of different draw ratio are all about 259°C. The breaking strength of fibers stretched by 200% is 160 MPa, which is close to three times of as-spun fibers. The DMA and XRD indicate that with the increasing of the stretch ratios, glass transition temperature of ETFE copolymer fibers is increased by 9℃. In the meantime, the crystallinity improved by 10.2% and 5.5% respectively. Besides, the breaking strength of all kinds of fibers has no obvious change after treating with H2SO4, acetone and NaClO, which shows the eexcellent resistance to chemical reagents.

Key words: ethylene-tetrafouoroethylene copolymer, melt-spinning, stretch ratio, fiber structure, fiber property