Polyvinyl butyral is used in safety glass interlayers, mainly in car windshields. Legislative regulations require a recycling of cars after their lifetime and therefore also their safety glass. This causes the availability of recycled polyvinyl butyrate (r-PVB) originated from safety glass interlayers. Due to deteriorated optical properties, such as the transparency, and unknown amounts of plasticizers, it is challenging to reuse the recycled material in new windshields. Therefore, it is of particular interest to find new fields of application for r-PVB, such as the usage as a textile coating. In this research, r-PVB was investigated as a material for yarn coating. Polyester and polyamide mono- and multifilament yarns were coated continuously with solely a polymer dispersion and with mixtures of crosslinking agent and polymer dispersion. Crosslinked r-PVB coatings showed enhanced properties toward abrasion and chemical resistance. Coatings without the crosslinking agent showed a diminished abrasion resistance and could be washed off with ethanol. Mechanical properties of the monofilaments were influenced by the r-PVB coating in general. However, varying concentrations of the crosslinking agent did not affect the mechanical properties.
Alternating current–driven electroluminescent devices on polyester fabrics were realized using a combination of coating and printing. The PEDOT:PSS front electrode was coated onto the fabric using knife coating. All other layers were digitally printed using a specially modified three-dimensional printer and three-dimensional printing software. Slicing parameters (line distance, printing speed, printing pattern) as well as other hardware parameters and ink viscosity were evaluated for each ink to obtain a good print. Final results show a complex interaction of all investigated parameters. Fully digitally printed electroluminescent devices show a luminescence of 44 lx, but combinations of digital printing and knife coating show a much higher luminescence of up to 128 lx for samples with an even smaller luminous layer thickness.
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