Brief history of organic fibers

A brief historical review of the work in the area of organic fibers will be helpful in placing things in perspective. We begin with the discovery of nylon. Nylon was discovered and commercialized by Du Pont in 1938 (Magat and Morrison, 

In what follows, we first describe general processing techniques used to make synthetic polymeric fibers, followed by a description of the processing, structure, and properties of some important low modulus organic fibers. Finally, we describe, in some detail, two commercially important, high-stifihess fibers aramid and polyethylene. 

Generally, synthetic polymers are made into fibers by a process known as fiber spinning. Fiber spinning is the process of extruding a liquid through small holes 

We have repeatedly pointed out that a very important characteristic of any polymeric fiber is the degree of molecular chain orientation along the fiber axis. The 

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