Study On The Preparation And Properties Of Quantum Energy Powder Modified Polyester Fibers

Exploitation of natural minerals as novel function material is one of most attractive issues during recent years.Quantum Energy research center in Korea herein provides a novel mineral material which is produced from natural feldspar mineral Osaekhyulto.The raw material is specially processed like crushing,purification and separation,calcination,and finally fermentation.The as-prepared material is officially listed as“Quantum Energy powder”and QE powder for short.As nano aluminosilicate material,QE powder is made up of various silicate materials and shows the positive effect on many fields such as moisture absorption,ultraviolet absorption,antibacterial and antioxidant.Therefore,it is significant and valuable to utilize QE powder for the exploitation of novel polyester functional material.In this paper,poly?ethylene terephthalate??PET?is used as matrix and QE powder as the modifier,the PET/QE composites are prepared via melt blending method.The novel Quantum Energy powder modified polyester fibers,which possess moisture absorption and ultraviolet absorption ability is spun by spinning-drafting one-step method.SEM,EDS,WAXD,particle size analysis,TG,FT-IR,DSC,POM and capillary rheometer are used to analyze the element,morphology and particle size of QE powder,as well as the shear rheology,crystallization and thermal properties of PET/QE composites.Tensile test,wicking test,specific resistance meter of fibers,fabric induction type electrostatic meter and ultraviolet diffuse reflectors are applied to evaluate the mechanical,moisture absorption,antistatic and ultraviolet absorption properties of PET/QE modified fiber.And the results show as following:1.QE powder belongs to compound aluminosilicate material which feldspar minerals dominate the component.It shows flake-like morphology,and its particle sizes are around 950 nm.When QE powder is added to the PET,the crystal structure of PET and the chemical group and structure of PET chain are unchanged,which demonstrate that the blend process is physical blending.PET/QE composites show a lower initial thermal decomposition temperature when increase the content of QE powder,however,thermal decomposition rate and degradation property shows no obvious change when QE powder loading increased.Shear rheology test indicates that the appearance of QE powder has not changed the flow type of PET,PET/QE composites are still pseudoplastic fluid,nevertheless,there is a dramatically non-newtonian behavior decrease for PET/QE melt.It is found that in a range of shear rates 900⁷000 s^-1,the non-newtonian index of PET/QE maintains the high sensitive to the shear rate.With the increasing loading of QE powder,shear viscosity and shear stress follow a dramatically decrease and shear viscosity almost shows an invariable value when shear rates increased,which imply that QE powder has a severe degradation effect on PET melt.2.The non-isothermal crystallization kinetics of PET/QE composites are studied via Avrami,Ozawa,Mo's,Dobreva,Lauritzen–Hoffman and Friedman methods.The results show that QE powder can enhance the crystallization rate of PET,and a highest crystallization rate appeared when QE powder loading up to 2 wt%.Both homogeneous nucleation and heterogeneous nucleation are occurred on the system during the nucleation of PET,and the heterogeneous nucleation shows a dominance on the sample that possesses high content QE powder.Besides,the aggregation of modifier in the matrix also leads a decrease of the nucleation activity,which plays an important role on crystallization,the sample that QE powder loading is 1 wt%shows the finest activity instead of PET-2%QE sample.However,the analysis between non-isothermal crystallization activation energy and relative crystallinity implies that nucleation only has a pronounce effect at initial stage of the crystallization,with the development of crystallization conversion,the content of QE powder shows a main effect on the crystallization of PET.Hence,the sample with 2 wt%QE powder loading still shows a highest crystallization rate.The result of the isothermal crystallization test for PET/QE composites which carried out on a POM also verifies the analysis mentioned above.3.The PET/QE modified fiber that prepared via spinning-drafting one-step method shows a uniform size,and numerous particles with uneven size distribution adhesion on its surface and cross section.The tensile test shows that modified fiber has a 28.0%elongation ratio and a 2.6cN/dtex breaking strength.The adding of QE powder significantly elevates the moisture absorption ability of PET/QE fiber,and its moisture regain is elevated to 1.23%.The electrostatic properties also reveal an improvement for the fiber,the volume specific resistance of PET/QE fiber decreases 32%and its fabric induction electrostatic voltage peak values along with half decay time are 111 V and 0.49 s,which are respectively decreased 107 V and 0.47 s compared to the commercial fiber.The ultraviolet absorption measurement indicates that PET/QE fiber shows a certain extent absorption on both ultraviolet and visible-light bands,and it exhibits better ultraviolet absorption on UVA band compared to the laminar PET/QE composites.