Abstract:
Carpets used in residence and office buildings are made from poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) fiber. The polymer used in the recent years is recycled PET (RPET). Carpets are used in various conditions including damp environment which results in occurring of bacteria on the carpet. This drawback affects the quality of carpet. Therefore, the improvement of carpet quality by addition of anti-bacteria substance to the polymer fiber will protect the growth of bacteria on carpet.
In this research, we studied the addition of nano-titanium dioxide (TiO2) to RPET and extruded to fiber using a bicomponent extruder fed spinning machine. The master batch of RPET and 10 wt Percent TiO2 was firstly prepared using a twin screw extruder. Then, the master batch was blended with RPET with the TiO2 content of 1, 2 and 3 wt Percent. The multifilament was prepared by bicomponent melt spinning method with a single fiber and core/shell structure in which RPET was a core part and master batch was a shell part. The ratios of core/shell components were 90/10, 70/30, 50/50, 30/70 and 10/90 by weight. The fiber was collected with winding seed of 500 and 1,000 m/min.
The size of multifilament was measured by cutting cross section of fiber and evaluates the diameter using an optical microscopy technique. The mechanical property include tenacity, elongation at break and sonic modulus of multifilament was evaluated. The high draw ratio resulted in small diameter of fiber and molecular orientation and high tenacity was achieved. From x-rays diffraction (XRD) analysis, it is clear that these TiO2 can be classified as having standard anatase and rutile structures. The inhibition of bacterial growth is more effective with the bicomponent fibers.