Adhesion Promotion in Rayon/Nylon Skin/Core Bigeneric Fibers

Abstract

Rayon/nylon skin/core bigeneric fibers have been developed to combine mechanical properties ofsynthetic core material with moisture and comfort properties of cellulosic skin. Fibers are produced in a fiber coating operation where oriented nylon fiber is coated with viscose rayon solution in a fiber coating die. For fibers produced in earlier studies, adhesion between skin and core was not sufficient, and the skin debonded during subsequent processing. In this study, fumaric acid (FA) was used as an adhesion promoter in rayon coated fibers. Results of a severe abrasion test show that FA is an effective coupling agent with adhesion dependent on application conditions. There was significant interaction between FA concentration and time of FA pretreatment; high concentrations at shorter pretreatment times and low concentrations at longer times gave best adhesion. Results of the adhesion test were confirmed with electron microscopy.