Melt-compounding, fiber spinning, and fiber drawing
The production of the PET nanocomposite fibers was described
in our previous work [24,31]. It is important to reiterate that the
fiber spinning and drawing steps were performed separately in this
work, but within a reasonable time frame to avoid complexity with
physical aging. The draw oven was set to raise the temperature of
the filaments to 83 C, just above the glass transition temperature
of PET. Maximum draw ratios were determined by increasing the
speed ratio of the godets and observing the onset of fiber fraying
(i.e. filament mechanical failure), upon which the speed was
reduced slightly