The evaluation of stretchability and its applications for biaxially oriented polypropylene film

Abstract

AbstractIn recent years, plastic film is essential in our daily lives. Among them, polypropylene has good physical properties, for example, tensile strength, impact strength, and transparency. Recently, it was found that the stretchability of polypropylene (PP) is improved by blending a small amount of low modulus polypropylene (LMPP) which is a low tacticity polypropylene. The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of blending LMPP, which has different characteristic of resin such as tacticity and molecular weight, on PP and to study the mechanism of the structure formation in a biaxial stretching process. The blending of LMPP to PP reduces the spherulite size and increases the thickness of the amorphous phase in the lamella without changing the thickness of the crystal phase, namely the melting temperature. LMPP blends also reduced the yield stress during the stretching process and increased the stress buildup ratio. For these reasons, it improved film thickness uniformity of biaxially stretched film and reduced film break during the high production line. Furthermore, as the stretchable temperature window was widened to the low‐temperature side, the thickness uniformity was improved in the wide stretchable temperature. As a result, improving the stretchability and the film thickness uniformity of PP were achieved by blending LMPP to PP.