Melt-spun poly(tetrafluoroethylene) fibers

The recent discovery of melt-processable poly(tetrafluoroethylene) (PTFE) allows for common thermoplastic- polymer processing technologies to be applied to this unique polymer, which heretofore was considered to be highly intractable. In this paper, we report simple meltspinning of monofilaments of a set of melt-processable (modified) PTFE grades with weight-average molar masses (Mw) ranging from 77 to 292 kg/mol. Fibers were spun at 380 C at draw-down ratios of up to 2,750, yielding filaments of linear densities as low as 0.8 tex, corresponding to a diameter of ~20 lm. The maximum Young’s modulus and tensile strength of as-spun fibers produced in this study were 91.7 cN/tex (1,972 MPa) and 12.0 cN/tex (258 MPa), respectively, accompanied by a strain to break of 24%.