Just A Pretty Picture?

Engineers at Hills, Inc. recently designed a bicomponent spin pack that resulted in spinning a very unusual fiber (see below). This fiber is a type of island-in-the-sea bicomponent where a dissolvable polymer (blue) is used to surround islands of a standard polymer such as polypropylene, nylon or polyester. In this case the fiber was spun with a 50/50 ratio of polyethylene and polypropylene. It is not know at this time if this same cross-section can be obtained with other polymer combinations.

After dissolving away the blue polymer, the resulting fiber consists of a single high denier snowflake center surrounded by multiple round and oval shaped microfilaments. The large core should provide good fiber and fabric strength and large surface area for absorption, and the microfilaments will provide softness as well as absorption. This type of fiber should be ideal for filtration applications both in woven and nonwoven construction. The dual shape microfilaments will enhance the loft of the fabric while the grooves in the core filaments may enhance particle trapping and absorption.