Polytetrafluoroethylene general properties

The bulk (or volume)-specific resistance is one of the most useful general electrical properties. Specific resistance is a physical quantity that may vary more than 10 in readily available materials. This unusually wide range of conductivity allows wide variety of electrical applications. Conductive materials, such as copper, have specific resistance values of about 10 fl-cm, whereas good insulators such as polytetrafluoroethylene and LDPE have values of about 10 fl-cm. Specific resistance is calculated from the following equation where R is the resistance in ohms, a is the pellet area in square centimeters, t is the pellet thickness in centimeter, and P is the specific resistance in ohm-centimeter ... 

The general structure of this class of materials can, therefore, be summarized as a fine dispersion of metal oxide in a polymer matrix very similar to plasma polytetrafluoroethylene and in principle any metal should be able to be incorporated. Clearly, if the films are protected from the atmosphere, for metals which form involatile fluorides having a relatively weak metal-fluorine bond strength, it should be possible to produce films having metal atoms dispersed in the matrix. It is expected that these films will have many interesting chemical, optical, electrical and magnetic properties., ... 

Polytetrafluoroethylene has excellent chemical resistance properties. The effect of incorporation of additives on chemical properties depends on the t) e of the filler and the specific chemicals. In general, chemical properties of filled PTFE compounds are not as good as those of the unfilled resin. Table 3.21 shows the effect of a number of chemicals on car-bon/graphite, glass, and bronze compounds. 

Modifier - Generally a modifier refers to an additive which alters the properties of the host system. In the case of PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene), a modifier is a comonomer which modifies the properties of PTFE and is present at low concentration (<1%). An example is perfluoropropyl vinyl ether. 

Although there have been various membranes used, none is more researched or seen as the standard than the Nafion family by E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. Like the other membranes used, the general structure of Nafion is a copolymer between polytetrafluoroethylene and polysulfonyl fluoride vinyl ether. These perfluorinated sulfonic acid (PFSA) ionomers exhibit many interesting properties such as a high conductivity, prodigious water uptake, and high anion exclusion to name a few. Nafion is the main membrane studied in this chapter. 

The preparation of a GDL involves the use of a substrate, carbon cloth or paper [6-8], which are in general commercially available. They are usually treated to have hydrophobic/hydrophilic properties, typically using polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) [9]. A microporous carbon layer, made with carbon and PTFE with controlled porosity is applied to the substrate in the catalyst layer side or to both sides [10]. This improves the gas and water transport properties. 

The outline of the paper is as follows. In Sect. 2 we describe the basic RISM and PRISM formalisms, and the fundamental approximations invoked that render the polymer problem tractable. The predicticms of PRISM theory for the structure of polymer melts are described in Sect. 3 for a variety of single chain models, including a comparison of atomistic calculations for polyethylene melt with diffraction experiments. The general problem of calculating thermodynamic properties, and particularly the equation-of-state, within the PRISM formalism is described in Sect. 4. A detailed application to polyethylene fluids is summarized and compared with experiment. The develojanent of a density functional theory to treat polymer crystallization is briefly discussed in Sect. 5, and numerical predictions for polyethylene and polytetrafluoroethylene are summarized. 

Most polymers used today are thermoplastics. Poiypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polystyrene (PS) often find application as low-end consumer items, packaging or others. Technical parts are produced mostly from acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene-copolymer (ABS), polyamide (PA), polybutylene terephthalate (PBT), polyoxymethylene (POM), polyether sulfone (PES), polycarbonate (PC), polyphenylene sulfide (PPS), polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), polyether ether ketone (PEEK), or polyimide (PI). Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is a material often used in building construction, especially for roofing membranes, window frames, and pipes, and its properties (rigid or flexible) are generally modified by additives. 

Fluoropolymers have outstanding chemical resistance, low coefficient of friction, low dielectric constant, high purity, and broad use temperatures. Most of these properties are enhanced with an increase in the fluorine content of the polymers. For example, polytetrafluoroethylene, which contains four fluorine atoms per repeat unit, has superior properties compared to polyvinylidene fluoride, which has two fluorine atoms for each repeat unit. Generally, these plastics are mechanically weaker than engineering polymers. Their relatively low values of tensile strength, deformation under load or creep, and wear rate require the use of fillers and special design strategies. 

PFA polymers are fully fluorinated and melt processible. They have chemical resistance and thermal stability comparable to polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). Melt viscosity of PFA is over one million times lower than PTFE. Perfluoroalkoxy resins are in general copolymers of tetrafiuoroethylene with one or more of perfluoroalkyl vinyl ether comonomers. Commercial examples of the latter include perfluoromethyl vinyl ether (PMVE), perfluoroethyl vinyl ether (PEVE), and perfluoropropyl vinyl ether (PPVE). PFA resins are specified by ASTM Method D3307, which also provides procedures or references to other ASTM methods for the measurement of resin properties. Commercial PFA resins offered by major manufacturers have been listed in Tables 6.1 through 6.7. 

Vinyl fibers are those man-made fibers spun from polymers or copolymers of substituted vinyl monomers and include vinyon, vinal, vinyon-vinal matrix (polychlal), saran, and polytetrafluoroethylene fibers. Acrylic, modacrylic and polyolefin—considered in Chapters 8 and 9—are also formed from vinyl monomers, but because of their wide usage and particular properties they are usually considered as separate classes of fibers. The vinyl fibers are generally specialty fibers due to their unique properties and uses. AH of these fibers have a polyethylene hydrocarbon backbone with substituted functional groups that determine the basic physical and chemical properties of the fiber. 

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