Nanoindentation for Fast Investigation of PET Film Degradation

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

External Organisational units

  • Polymer Competence Center Leoben GmbH
  • Technische Universität Graz

Abstract

The lifetime of industrial polymer products is in many cases limited by aging. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a fast and sensitive method to detect polymer aging at an early stage. A commercially available 50-µm-thick and transparent polyethylene terephtalate (PET) film was aged under different artificial conditions, and the evolution of mechanical properties with increasing aging time was investigated via nanoindentation (NI) and tensile testing. Chemical aging was studied with gel permeation chromatography (GPC), and physical aging was monitored by the first heating of differential scanning calorimetry. NI data evaluated with the method of Oliver and Pharr was compared to tensile test data with good agreement between the results on the macro- and nanoscales. Furthermore, a correlation between NI creep data and GPC data was obtained, which indicates that the aging of the PET films primarily originated from chemical aging. This study states that NI is an appropriate method to determine degradation of PET at an early stage.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2287-2294
Number of pages8
JournalJOM
Volume74.2022
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 20 Apr 2022