SEM and AFM microscopical characterization of rPAN fibre and PET blends

Recycling is one of the key ways of improving polymer properties and viable applications. Polymer blends are generating desired properties and the strength of recycled polymer improves depending on the ratio of the compositional blend. Microscopic characterization of the properties of recycled polyacrylonitrile fibre with polyethylene terephthalate using SEM and AFM was investigated in this work. The results revealed that blended compositions of rPAN/PET (50/50; 70/30) are viable to explore while rPAN/PET (30/70) blend resulted in poor adhesion between the matrix and phase. Therefore, high percentage composition of rPAN in the blended samples positively improves the processing properties of PET.