Nylon 6 is a versatile thermoplastic that finds applications in a
broad range of products owing to its good physical and mechanical
properties. There has also been considerable interest in recent
years to replace thermosets with nylon 6 in light-weight composite
products, such as turbine blades [1]. This is because compared with
thermosets, nylon 6 potentially provides higher resistance to
fatigue and the composites can be remolded upon melting, thus
presenting a prospective environmentally friendly manufacturing
process. Anionic polymerization of e-caprolactam has been
employed to directly fabricate parts via vacuum infusion or reaction
injection molding [1–3]. This is possible since the anionic
polymerization occurs at a fairly fast rate (i.e. in a few minutes)
and relatively low temperature (i.e. 150 C). This reactive processing
method hence allows composites to be easily processed in a
way similar to their thermoset counterparts, and with short mold
cycle times.