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Synthesis of disentangled Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene: influence of reaction medium on material properties

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posted on 2017-04-28, 13:45 authored by Giuseppe Forte, Sara Ronca
The polymerization of ethylene to Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMWPE) in certain reaction conditions allows synthesis of nascent powders with a considerably lower amount of entanglements: the material obtained is of great interest from both academic and industrial viewpoints. From an academic point of view, it is interesting to follow the evolution of the metastable melt state with the progressive entanglements formation. Industrially, it is valuable to have a solvent-free processing route for the production of high modulus, high strength tapes. Since the polymer synthesis is performed in the presence of a solvent, it is interesting to investigate the influence that the reaction medium can have on the catalyst activity, resultant molecular characteristics and polymer morphology at the macroscopic as wells as microscopic level. In this paper we present the effect that two typical polymerization solvents, toluene and heptane, and mixtures of them, have on the catalytic performance and on the polymer properties. The observations are that an unexpected increase of catalyst activity, accompanied by a significant improvement in mechanical properties, is found when using a carefully chosen mixture of solvents. A tentative explanation is given on the basis of the presented results.

Funding

This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC, grant EP/K034405/1).

History

School

  • Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering

Department

  • Materials

Published in

International Journal of Polymer Science

Citation

RONCA, S. and FORTE, G., 2017. Synthesis of disentangled Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene: influence of reaction medium on material properties. International Journal of Polymer Science, Volume 2017 (2017), Article ID 7431419.

Publisher

Hindawi Publishing Corporation © Giuseppe Forte and Sara Ronca

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2017-04-06

Publication date

2017

Notes

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Hindawi under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ISSN

1687-9422

eISSN

1687-9430

Language

  • en

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