Method of manufacturing a continuous filament by electrospinning and continuous filament manufactured thereby

Abstract

Disclosed are a method of manufacturing a continuous filament by electrospinning, and a continuous filament manufactured thereby. Electrospun nano fibers 4 are collected on a collector 7 by electrically spinning a polymer spinning dope in a spinning dope main tank 1 onto the collector 7, which is a disk-shaped conductive material with a high voltage applied thereto and which rotates at a rotational linear velocity of 5 m / sec or more, through nozzles 2 having a high voltage applied thereto, and then the nano fiber 4 collected on the collector 7 are prepared in the form of a continuous filament by use of a collecting roller 11, and then the nano fibers 4 are (I) put in a canvas 14 through a traverse 13, or (II) dried, drawn, and wound consecutively.The continuous filament is superior in terms of drawing properties because nano fibers are arranged well in a filament axis direction, the continuous filament composed of nano fibers can be prepared by a continuous procedure, and the prepared continuous filament is useful as materials for various industrial fields, such as artificial leather, filters, and so on.

Description

[0001]This application is a Divisional of co-pending application Ser. No. 11 / 916,639, filed on Dec. 5, 2007 and for which priority is claimed under 35 U.S.C. § 120. application Ser. No. 11 / 916,639 is the national phase of PCT International Application No. PCT / KR2006 / 000963 filed on Mar. 16, 2009 under 35 U.S.C. § 371. The entire contents of each of the above-identified applications are hereby incorporated by reference.TECHNICAL FIELD[0002]The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a continuous filament or yarn (hereinafter, commonly referred to as a “filament”) by an electrospinning method and a continuous filament manufactured thereby, and more particularly, to a method of manufacturing a continuous filament which is superior in physical properties and composed of a nano fiber by a continuous procedure by continuously producing a filament superior in drawing properties because of nano fibers well arranged in the filament axis direction, and then putting them in canv...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0062]The present invention is very superior in terms of physical properties because the continuous filament is composed of an aggregate of well-arranged nano fibers. The continuous filament prepared in the present invention is greatly improved in terms of physical properties.

Problems solved by technology

In order to produce artificial leather from the fiber prepared by these methods, a complex process must be carried out, including melt spinning, nano fiber production, non-woven fabric production, urethane impregnation and single component dissolution.

Nevertheless, it has been impossible to produce a fiber with a diameter 1,000 nm or less by the above two methods.

In case of the spit type conjugate spinning method, it has been problematic in that since two polymer components (for example, polyester and polyamide) with different dyeing properties co-exist in a fiber, uneven dyeing occurs and an artificial leather production process is complicated.

In addition, it has been difficult to produce a fiber with a diameter 2,000 nm or less by the above method.

Thus, it is difficult to prepare a continuous filament using the conventional electrospinning method.

Hence, to prepare a continuous filament, the produced nano fiber web has to be cut to a predetermined length to produce a staple fiber and this staple fiber has to be blown and undergone an additional spinning process, which makes the process complicated.

A spinning distance (distance between the nozzle and the collector) is so short in an electrospinning process that a method capable of drawing by applying a physical force is restrictive, and thus the mechanical properties are very low.

However, this method has a low possibility of industrialization, and any drawing force cannot be applied to this method.

However, this conventional process is problematic in that the strength of the prepared filament is low due to poor arrangement of nano fibers in the fiber axis direction.

As seen from above, there is a problem that it is not possible to mass-produce a continuous filament composed of a nano fiber which is superior in drawing properties due to poor arrangement of nano fibers in the fiber axis direction by the conventional techniques known so far.

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