Processing, Structure and Properties of Melt Blown Polyetherimide

Abstract

Polyetherimide (PEI), an engineering plastic with very high glass transition temperature and excellent chemical and thermal stability has been processed into membranes of varying pore size, performance, and surface characteristics. A special grade of the polyetherimide was processed by melt blowing to produce microfiber nonwovens suitable as filter media. The resulting microfiber webs were characterized to evaluate their structure and properties. The fiber webs were further modified by hot pressing, a post processing technique, which reduces the pore size in order to improve the barrier properties of the resulting membranes. This ongoing research has shown that polyetherimide can be a good candidate for filter media requiring high temperature and chemical resistance with good mechanical properties.