An eco-friendly post-drawing process for splitting bicomponent filaments

Abstract An eco-friendly post-drawing process without any chemical solvents for splitting orange (segmented) pie bicomponent multifilaments (OP bico fibers) from biodegradable poly(lactic acid) (PLA) und polypropylene (PP) is developed. Emphasis of the study is given on understanding thermal behavior of the PLA and PP during heating and cooling processes. Due to the differences in their thermal behavior, particular crystallization behavior, PLA and PP in OP bico fibers split from each other during drawing under heat treatment only and become ultrafine fibers special cross-sections and very large surface area. Furthermore, these post-drawn fibers possess very high tensile strength at 51.0 cN/Tex, which is 1.7 times higher than pure PLA fibers and three times as high as that of melt spun bico fibers.