Study On Polypropylene/ Micron Inorganic Antibacterial Powders Blend Compounds And Fine Fibers

Together with the development of industry and the promotion of people's living level, the demands for fiber and fabric products with good antibacterial property are increasing. Polypropylene(PP) is one of the most important thermoplastic polymers because of its low cost, large source, good processibility,good mechanical properties.Especially fine Polypropylene fibers have good moisture permeability, good air permeability, and good resistant to fungi and bacteria. Therefore, it has widely application future in medical filed, cloth field and nonwoven field.In this paper, inorganic antibacterial powder was chosen as new type functional additive. Then surface modification technique with coupling agents was adopted to tailor the surface properties of inorganic antibacterial powders. Furthermore, the modification effect was characterized and analyzed. Cyclohexane was used as dispensing medium to study and simulate the surface properties and dispensability of inorganic antibacterial powder in PP matrix. PP/inorganic antibacterial powder compounds were extruded with twin screw and functional fibers were produced by melt spinning.The dispersivity of powder, some other basic properties and functional properties of composite fibers were investigated systematically. Then, some exciting results were found as follow:Inorganic antibacterial powder, modified with different coupling agents, showed different effects on its dispersion. Comparied these modified inorganic powders, the one treated with 3# agent in 5 wt% amount showed the best dispensability in PP matrix. But the spinning property of this compound still needs to be further studied in detial.By using twin-extruder spinning machine, antibacterial fibers were prepared. The spinniability of PP blending systems and the mechanical properties of PP blending fibers were studied. Results indicated that the PP blending system of modified PP with 0.8% No.l inorganic antibacterial powder owns good spinning properties. The filament size of compound fiber is less than 1.2dtex, and the ultimate tensile strength is more than 4.0 cN/dtex.The inorganic antibacterial powders slightly affect the orientation of PP macromolecular in fibers. By increasing the multiple of drawing, the orientation degree of blended fibers tend to be equal to the pure PP fibers. Then the crystalline ability of the compound were studied, the powder has no effect to the crystal form, but the mode of growth.Testing the antibacterial property of the blending fibers, we found that antibacterial PP fibers are sensitive to coliform, staphylococcus auteus, aspergillusniger, especially to coliform . The antibacterial rate reachs 97.8% at 0 hour and 100% at 24 hours to coliform. Antibacterial PP fibers were washed twenty times, the Antibacterial rate of washed fibers reachs 97.9% at 24 hours to coliform.