Effects of electron beam irradiation on structure and properties of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fiber

Abstract

This study introduced trimethylolpropane trimethacrylate into ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fibers through supercritical CO2 pretreatment before the fibers were irradiated under an electron beam. Significant differences, emerging in the ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fibers’ gel content, mechanical properties, and creep property according to their different irradiation doses, were studied through one-way analysis of variance. Regression equations were established between the irradiation dose and the gel content, breaking strength, elongation at break, and creep rate by regression analysis. A reasonable irradiation dosage range was determined after a verification experiment and the impact trends were analyzed; additionally, the sensitized irradiation crosslinking mechanism of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fibers was preliminarily examined. Then the surface morphology, chemical structures, thermal properties, and crystal properties of treated ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fibers were measured. The results showed that as the irradiation dose increased, the gel content first rose and then declined; the breaking strength decreased continuously; the elongation at break increased at first and then decreased; and the creep rate originally fell and then rose before finally declining slowly. Electron beam irradiation had a significant etching effect on the fibers’ surface, and both the melting point and crystallinity decreased slightly.

Ultra-High-Molecular-Weight-Polyethylene (UHMWPE) as a Promising Polymer Material for Biomedical Applications: A Concise Review

“…Multiple factors influenced the crystallinity and oxidative degradation by irradiation [61,62]. The dose and dose rate of irradiation strongly influence the crystallinity and oxidation of UHMWPE [55,[63][64][65][66][67][68][69]. A suitable post-irradiation process eliminates free radicals to prevent degradation of UHMWPE over the long period and to promote the stability against oxidation.…”

Structure and properties evolution of UV crosslinked ultra‐high molecular weight polyethylene fiber during processing

“…28 Additionally, unlike the crosslinked UHMWPE fibers that were reported in other literature, for example, Wen et.al. 7 employed an electron beam to prepare a crosslinked UHMWPE fiber with gel content of 88.0% but crystallinity only of 35.7%; Dai et al 8 prepared a crosslinked fiber processed gel content of 70.0% and crystallinity of 72.4%, on the basis of the data shown in Section 2.1, UVFDY not only with high crystallinity (84.2%) but also processed high gel content (89.0%). The reason why UVFDY owned this characteristic was that the UV irradiation happened after the fiber multi-stretching (Scheme 1), the photoinitiators in the amorphous regions were not blocked by the crystal grains and were more prone to crosslinking reaction, while a suitable UV irradiation process had little effect on the crystalline regions.…”

“…Wen et al 7 prepared a 3D crosslinked structure of UHMWPE fiber by immersing UHMWPE fiber into antioxidants and then using an electron beam to irradiate the fiber. The results illustrated that the creep elongation of the fiber decreased from 2.4% (blank sample) to 1.6% as well as the thermal degradation temperature increased by approximately 5 C. Dai et al 8 introduced trimethylolpropane trimethacrylate (TMPTMA) into UHMWPE fibers via supercritical CO 2 pretreatment. After that, the fiber was irradiated under an electron beam, preparing a kind of crosslinked UHMWPE fiber.…”

Electron beam irradiation treatment of textiles materials: a review

“…Dai and Shi [72] presented the grafting of (TMPTMA) into UHMWPE fibers via scCO 2 pretreatment before irradiating the fiber with EB. At five different doses of irradiation, considerable variations in gel quality, breaking strength, elongation at break, and creep rate emerged among UHM-WPE fabrics.…”