Chapter 8Poly(ethylene terephthalate)—PET and Poly(ethylene naphthalate)—PEN
Luigi Sorrentino*, Marco D’ Auria and Eugenio Amendola
Istituto per i Polimeri, Compositie Biomateriali, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Portici, Italy
*Corresponding author: luigi.sorrentino@cnr.it
Abstract
Since its discovery in 1930 by American chemist Wallace Hume Carothers and his coworkers, poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) attracted a great deal of attention by academic and industrial researchers. The new synthetic polymer, whose linear structure is built up by terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol units, was soon used for an extremely wide range of applications, such as food and beverage packaging, textile fibers, thermoforming, and fiber-reinforced plastic production. Nowadays, PET is the most common thermoplastic polymer of the wider polyester family. It is easy and cheap to synthesize, its glass transition temperature of 75 °C and melting temperature of 250 °C, coupled with a high crystallinity degree and good mechanical properties boosted the global PET production in 2014 to some 41.56 million metric tons, and it is forecasted that by 2020 its production will be approximately 73.39 million metric tons. Poly(ethylene naphthalate) (PEN) is another member of the linear polyester family. It exhibits wide structural similarities with PET but is characterized by higher transition temperatures (125 °C as glass transition temperature and 265 °C as melting temperature), and it is used in higher ...
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