Mass‐productions of porous polyethylene template with controlled array structure

Abstract

Well-ordered, globally oriented composite fibers with micro/nanowire arrays of polystyrene (PS) fibers embedded in polyethylene (PE) were prepared by an iterative melt co-drawing and the bundling technique. With section-cutting of the PE/PS fiber and the dissolution of inner PS, porous PE fibers were obtained. Optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed that the distribution of pores were regular hexagonal, the diameters of the pores after the third drawing step were about 175 nm, and the spacings of pores were 1-2 micron. There was good agreement between calculated and experimental values for the pore diameters and spacings. The obtained porous template was used to prepare Cu nanowires by electrochemical deposition. SEM in combination with the energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) indicated that Cu nanowires were successfully deposited in the pores of the template. Potential applications of this simple and inexpensive fabrication technology were discussed for preparing micro/nanowire arrays with highly controllable geometric parameters. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 55:1211-1218, 2015

Fabrication of Polymer Composite Fibers Embedding Ultra-Long Micro/Nanowires

“…For these reasons mentioned above, a simple method, namely multi-step melt co-drawing techniques [ 5 , 6 , 34 ], is proposed to prepare the micro/nano porous array polymer templates and ultra-long polymer micro/nanowires. Compared with other conventional methods, this technique possesses many advantages: (1) the size parameters of micro/nano structures can be easily controlled in a large range (from millimeter-scale to nanometer-scale); (2) the obtained arrangement morphology of the micro/nano structures exhibits excellent uniformity; (3) high yield, high repeatability, easy operation; and (4) no being limited to polymer materials.…”