Material Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology; Theiss Research.
Material Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology; Department of Chemical Engineering, Texas Tech University.
J Vis Exp. 2021 Mar 18(169). doi: 10.3791/62283.
Light-weight, protective armor systems typically consist of high modulus (>10 MPa) and high-strength polymeric fibers held in place with an elastic resin material (binder) to form a non-woven, unidirectional laminate. While significant efforts have focused on improving the mechanical properties of the high-strength fibers, little work has been undertaken to improve the properties of the binder materials. To improve the performance of these elastomeric polymer binders, a relatively new and simple fabrication process, known as solution blow spinning, was used. This technique is capable of producing sheets or webs of fibers with average diameters ranging from the nanoscale to the microscale. To achieve this, a solution blow spinning (SBS) apparatus has been designed and built in the laboratory to fabricate non-woven fiber mats from polymer elastomer solutions. In this study, a commonly used binder material, a styrene-butadiene-styrene block-co-polymer dissolved in tetrahydrofuran, was used to produce nanocomposite fiber mats by adding metallic nanoparticles (NPs), such as iron oxide NPs, that were encapsulated with silicon oil and thus incorporated in the fibers formed via the SBS process. The protocol described in this work will discuss the effects of the various critical parameters involved in the SBS process, including the polymer molar mass, the selection of the thermodynamically appropriate solvent, the polymer concentration in solution, and the carrier gas pressure to assist others in performing similar experiments, as well as provide guidance to optimize the configuration of the experimental setup. The structural integrity and morphology of the resultant non-woven fiber mats were examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and elemental X-ray analysis via energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). The goal of this study is to evaluate the effects of the various experimental parameters and material selections to optimize the structure and morphology of the SBS fiber mats.
轻量型、防护装甲系统通常由高模量（>10MPa）和高强度聚合物纤维组成，这些纤维用弹性树脂材料（粘合剂）固定在一起，形成非织造、单向层压板。虽然人们已经投入大量精力来提高高强度纤维的机械性能，但在改进粘合剂材料的性能方面所做的工作却很少。为了提高这些弹性聚合物粘合剂的性能，采用了一种相对较新的简单制造工艺，称为溶液吹纺。该技术能够生产出具有从纳米级到微级平均直径的纤维片材或纤维网。为了实现这一点，在实验室中设计并制造了一种溶液吹纺（SBS）设备，用于从聚合物弹性体溶液中制造非织造纤维垫。在这项研究中，使用了一种常用的粘合剂材料，即苯乙烯-丁二烯-苯乙烯嵌段共聚物，溶解在四氢呋喃中，通过添加金属纳米粒子（如氧化铁纳米粒子）来制备纳米复合材料纤维垫，这些纳米粒子被硅油包裹，因此可以通过 SBS 工艺形成的纤维中。本工作中描述的方案将讨论 SBS 工艺中涉及的各种关键参数的影响，包括聚合物摩尔质量、选择热力学上合适的溶剂、溶液中的聚合物浓度以及载气压力，以帮助其他人进行类似的实验，并提供指导，以优化实验装置的配置。使用扫描电子显微镜（SEM）和能量色散 X 射线光谱（EDS）的元素 X 射线分析来检查所得非织造纤维垫的结构完整性和形态。本研究的目的是评估各种实验参数和材料选择对优化 SBS 纤维垫结构和形态的影响。
