THE EFFECT OF DRAWING AND ANNEALING CONDITIONS ON THE STRUCTURE AND PROPERTIES OF BACTERIAL POLY(3-HYDROXYBUTYRATE-CO-3-HYDROXYVALERATE) FIBERS

The effect of drawing and annealing on structure development and resul ting properties of bacterial poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalera te) (P(3HB-co-3HV)) fibers have been investigated. Melt spun and subse quently drawn and annealed fibers were characterized by wide-angle and small-angle X-ray scattering techniques. WAXS studies revealed that t hese fibers possess bimodal chain orientation with two populations of crystals: in the first population the chain axes are oriented primaril y along the fiber axis and in the second population these chain axes a re oriented in the transverse direction to the fiber axis. In the latt er crystals, a- and b-axes are randomly distributed around their c-axe s. At the annealing temperature of 100 degrees C, the relative populat ion of the crystals oriented normal to the fiber axis was found to be large and their proportion decreases with the increase of annealing te mperature. SAXS patterns were found to accompany the changes observed in the WAXS patterns. The tensile strength of these fibers improved by the increase of the proportion of the transversely or oriented chains .