Nylon is an engineering plastic widely used in many applications including textiles due to excellent mechanical properties. However, the inherent flammability and melt dripping of Nylon limit the use of Nylon in several applications. Flame retardants (FR) are typically blended into polymers to enhance thermal stability impart fire resistance. However for Nylon, due to having high processing temperature (over than 250<sup>o</sup>C), there are very few non-toxic commercial FR available. Surface functionalization can be a strategy for grafting FR onto the surface of Nylon. While conventional heating process has been usually used for such grafting reactions the long time reaction time (4 - 6 hours) makes it impractical from a commercial perspective. Recently, microwave assisted synthesis has been reported to shorten the reaction times. In this work, vinyl monomers such as 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) have been grafted polymerized onto Nylon fabric using microwave assisted synthesis. The reaction parameters such as reaction time, temperature, monomer and initiator concentration were varied to optimize grafting efficiency. The thermal stability and heat release characteristics of the functionalized fabric were characterized using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and pyrolysis combustion flow calorimetry (PCFC) respectively. Preliminary studies indicate improvement of thermal stability after grafting of HEMA. Detailed characterization of the HEMA grafted Nylon fabric will be presented.

Microwave assisted surface functionalization of nylon fabric

256th National Meeting (2018)

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