Nanoindentation for Fast Investigation of PET Film Degradation

Petra Christöfl*, Bettina Ottersböck, Caterina Czibula, Astrid Macher, Christian Teichert, Gerald Pinter, Gernot Oreski

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The lifetime of industrial polymer products is in many cases limited by aging. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a fast and sensitive method to detect polymer aging at an early stage. A commercially available 50-µm-thick and transparent polyethylene terephtalate (PET) film was aged under different artificial conditions, and the evolution of mechanical properties with increasing aging time was investigated via nanoindentation (NI) and tensile testing. Chemical aging was studied with gel permeation chromatography (GPC), and physical aging was monitored by the first heating of differential scanning calorimetry. NI data evaluated with the method of Oliver and Pharr was compared to tensile test data with good agreement between the results on the macro- and nanoscales. Furthermore, a correlation between NI creep data and GPC data was obtained, which indicates that the aging of the PET films primarily originated from chemical aging. This study states that NI is an appropriate method to determine degradation of PET at an early stage.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2287-2294
Number of pages8
JournalJOM, the Journal of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society
Volume74
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2022

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Materials Science(all)
  • Engineering(all)

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Nanoindentation for Fast Investigation of PET Film Degradation'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this