Microporous membranes of polyoxymethylene from a melt-extrusion process: (II) effects of thermal annealing and stretching on porosity

A two-part study utilizing polyoxymethylene (POM) was undertaken to investigate a three-stage process (melt-extrusion/annealing/uniaxial-stretching) utilized to produce microporous films. In this report, the thermal annealing (second stage) and subsequent uniaxial-stretching (third stage) results of selected POM films from two commercial resins, labeled D & F, are discussed. Specifically, the annealing and uniaxial stretching effects on film morphology, orientation, and other pertinent film properties are addressed. Additionally, sequential analysis was performed regarding the influence each stage had on the resulting microporosity. It was found that the melt-extruded precursor morphology and orientation, as a consequence of the first stage extrusion parameters and resin characteristics, are crucial to controlling the membrane permeability. The annealing parameters were also deemed critical, where a temperature of 145degreesC applied for 20 min under no tension was the optimum annealing condition for producing a highly microporous film upon stretching. For the conditions studied, the stretching parameters that were found to be optimum for producing the desired characteristics in the final film were a cold temperature of 50degreesC and hot stretch temperature of 100degreesC. The optimum extension levels were concluded to be 90% for both the cold and hot stretch steps, and thus a total overall extension level of 180%. However, these results were only with respect to resin F films. Because the resin D melt-extruded precursors possessed twisted lamellar morphologies and relatively low crystal orientation, their samples could not be produced into microporous films. (C) 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.