Relationship Between Melting Kinetics and Disentangled State of UHMWPE

Dario Romano, Kangsheng Liu, Niek Tops, Sanjay Rastogi

Research output: Contribution to conferencePosterAcademic

Abstract

Ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) is a simple polymer used for many engineering applications such as ballistic, medical and applications where high mechanical properties are desired. However, its processing has always been challenging due to the high melt viscosity caused by the large number of entanglements [1]. Recently, a major processing improvement has been achieved thank to the synthesis of UHMWPE having reduced amount of entanglements in the amorphous phase of the semi-crystalline polymer. The reduced amount of entanglements allows the polymer to be solid-state processed into tapes having unprecedented mechanical properties. So far, melt rheology has been used to characterize the entangled state of the polymer produced. In this study, we made use of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and temperature-modulated-DSC (TM-DSC) to determine the entangled state of the synthesized UHMWPE samples. DSC has been found to be a tool to estimate the disentangled state of the UHMWPE. It has been found a good correlation between the disentangled state as depicted by rheology and the disentangled state as depicted by DSC. Correlations between the melting kinetic, mechanical properties and the solid-state processing of the oriented tapes have been found [2].
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 2017

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