ABSTRACT
Abstract The aging behavior of textiles made of polyimide (PI) and other high-performance polymers was studied by accelerated aging simulation. The samples were exposed to basic or acidic vapors and the tensile strength of the samples measured as a function of exposure time, i.e., duration of storage. The data show that maramide is quite resistant to the basic vapor and shows only a slight decrease in tensile strength after 300 h in acidic vapors. However, a significant increase in degradation due to acidic vapor is found at higher temperatures under ‘closed-system’ conditions. PI, on the other hand, is highly sensitive to basic conditions and is significantly damaged in these atmospheres already after 2 h at 60◦C. The second part of this study was to investigate the potential of inorganic-organic hybrid polymers deposited as thin layers to increase the resistance of exemplary technical textiles against aging-promoting influences. GPTMS-based sols were prepared and applied to the fabric samples. The data showed that the sol-gel coating did not improve the aging behavior of m-aramide as well as glass fiber fabrics in acidic vapor, whereas the inorganic-organic hybrid polymer formed a highly efficient barrier against the alkaline attack from basic vapor in the case of the glass fiber samples.
