Polybenzoxazole Zylon

Polybenzazole group of fibers include PBI (Celanese) and polybenzoxazole (Zylon, Toyobo). These are wholly aromatic structures. The applications for PBI include fire-blocking fabrics for aircraft seats, firefighters suits, racing-car driver suit, etc. However, these fibers have poor resistance to both UV and visible light, and so must be protected from intense radiation source. 

These fibre-formimg polymers are so-called ladder polymers and possess wholly aromatic polymer chains. The two common examples available commercially are the polybenzimidazole FBI (Intertek, formerly Celanese) with the full chemical name poly (2,2 -(m-phenylene)-5,5 -bibenzimidazole) and the polybenzoxazole Zylon (Toyobo) with the full chemical name polyfpara-phenylene benzobisoxazole) and generic acronym PBO. Their similarity in polymer chain stractures and high degrees of... 

Zylon is the registered trademark of Toyobo Corporation for a special polymer of extraordinary strength and thermal stability. Chemically it is polybenzoxazole, consisting of diamino resorcinol and dicatboxylic acids, as terephthalic acid (Scheme 14.1). 

Many of the first electronic textiles used Indian metal silk organzas (Buechley, 2007). These organzas are made from silk wound with thin gold strips to form a heUx (Post, 1996), again in a method used by the ancients. Another approach is to add a metallized coating directly to a core yam. In the conunercial products, a number of base fibres are used. These range from cotton, silk, polyester and nylon to polybenzoxazole (PBO Zylon ), aromatic polyesters (Vectran ) and aramids (Kevlar ). 

---