PTFE fiber is a chemically resistant material. It is used in woven form in certain
pump packings as well as in
nonwoven
Nonwoven fabric or non-woven fabric is a fabric-like material made from staple fibre (short) and long fibres (continuous long), bonded together by chemical, mechanical, heat or solvent treatment. The term is used in the textile manufacturing in ...
form in hot gas
bag filters for industries with corrosive exhausts.
Production
Because
PTFE
Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is a synthetic fluoropolymer of tetrafluoroethylene, and has numerous applications because it is chemically inert. The commonly known brand name of PTFE-based composition is Teflon by Chemours, a spin-off fro ...
is relatively insoluble and has a very high melting point, PTFE fibers can not be fashioned from conventional melt or solution
spinning
Spin or spinning most often refers to:
* Spin (physics) or particle spin, a fundamental property of elementary particles
* Spin quantum number, a number which defines the value of a particle's spin
* Spinning (textiles), the creation of yarn or thr ...
. Instead they are made by combining particles of PTFE with
cellulose
Cellulose is an organic compound with the chemical formula, formula , a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to many thousands of glycosidic bond, β(1→4) linked glucose, D-glucose units. Cellulose is an important s ...
, forming fibers of the cellulose and then sintering the PTFE particles (and charring the cellulose). The remnant char gives the fiber a brown color. It can be
bleach
Bleach is the generic name for any chemical product that is used industrially or domestically to remove color from (i.e. to whiten) fabric or fiber (in a process called bleaching) or to disinfect after cleaning. It often refers specifically t ...
ed white, although this reduces the strength.
[Fluoroplastics, Volume 1: Non-Melt Processible Fluoroplastics, Sina Ebnesajjad, 2000, p.194]
See also
*
Quartz fiber
Quartz fiber is a fiber created from high-purity quartz crystals. It is made by first softening quartz rods (in an oxyhydrogen flame) and then creating filaments from the rods. Since the creation of high-purity quartz crystals is an energy int ...
References
External links
Carbon Fiber
Fibers
Materials science
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