Mechanical Properties of Plasticized Cellulose Ester Films at Room and High Temperatures

• Main Authors: Abd Manaf, Mohd Edeerozey, Nitta, Koh-Hei, Yamaguchi, Masayuki
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Asian Research Publishing Network (ARPN) 2016
• Subjects: TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
• Online Access: http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/17756/1/ARPN%20jeas.pdf; http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/17756/; http://www.arpnjournals.com/jeas/index.htm

Cellulose ester is a biomass-derived material and exhibits excellent heat resistance and high transparency, properties required for optical film application. Recently, attention has been paid to cellulose esters due to their potential application as a functional film. Some cellulose esters such as cellulose acetate propionate (CAP) show extraordinary dispersion of orientation birefringence, in which the birefringence increases with increasing wavelength, a property required as a retardation film. The similar behaviour is also observed for cellulose triacetate (CTA) plasticized with tricresyl phosphate (TCP). In this study, the mechanical properties of pure and plasticized CAP and CTA at room and high temperatures are investigated to relate with their birefringence property. At room temperature, CTA film shows a higher brittleness than CAP film. At 15 K above their respective Tg, pure CAP and CTA can be stretched to draw ratio of 5.0 and 2.0, respectively. However, the addition of TCP slightly decreases the stretchability in both CAP and CTA to draw ratio of 4.5 and 1.5, respectively. The stretchability of both pure and plasticized CAP and CTA is found to increase with the increase of stretching temperature, which is useful to increase the value of orientation birefringence as it increases with draw ratio. However, birefringence value becomes lower at higher temperature. Thus, to obtain an optimum value of orientation birefringence, a balance between the draw ratio and stretching temperature has to be considered.