A zone drawing method to determine optimum polymer concentration and gelation temperature of high molecular weight polymer film

Abstract

The zone drawing method has been used to determine optimum initial concentration and gelation/crystallization temperature for suitable macromolecular entanglements. Ultra-high molecular weight (UHMW) polyethylene (PE) gel films were prepared from decalin solution with different polymer concentrations and different gelation temperatures and then drawn under various zone drawing conditions. It was found that the initial concentration and gelation temperature of PE solution caused significant changes in draw ratio of UHMW PE gel film. That is, at initial concentration of 0.5 g/dl and at gelation temperature of 25°C, the one-step zone draw ratio revealed a maximum and gradually decreased at higher or lower concentrations. In addition, the lower the initial concentration, the lower the gelation/crystallization temperature. This tendency was similar to the maximum draw ratio data. Conclusively, it was identified that the optimum polymer concentration and gelation temperature of UHMW PE solution could be obtained simply by the zone draw ratio.