Teijin has developed a unique production process which they say will achieve unsurpassed heat resistance and excellent dye-ability. This will provide customers with highly diversified solutions for the design and manufacturing of protective apparel, a feature that is not yet available or offered in the market. In addition, Teijin’s new production technologies ensure a compliance with REACH and other environmental regulations directly out of the factory and without additional treatment.

The company say that this new product will further increase Teijin’s position and competitiveness in the emerging economies of Asia and other regions, where the demand for heat-proof and flame-retardant high-performance materials is growing due to increasing safety awareness and regulations. Teijinconex neo will also meet the strong demand in the markets of Japan, North America and Europe for protective clothing solutions that combine comfort, manoeuvrability as well as high protection property. Teijin is targeting sales revenue of JPY 20 billion in the global safety and protection field by 2020.

Teijin’s aramid fibres Teijinconex meta-aramid, Twaron and Technora para-aramid have increased the advancement of protective apparel over the decades. Production at a new Teijin facility in Ayutthaya, Thailand, which will nearly double the annual capacity of Teijin’s global meta-aramid fibre production, is scheduled to start in mid–2015.

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The new unidirectional laminate, available for use in soft body armour and consisting of two plies of Twaron yarn plied in a 0˚/90˚ configuration. It uses smart Unidirectional (UD) technology which aligns the Twaron fibres in each layer in parallel direction. Each layer is individually constructed within a resin matrix, and thermoplastic film is laminated to the top and bottom of the two UD plies to ensure maximum abrasion resistance.

Today’s anti-ballistic products need to meet ever increasingly complex specifications – e.g. ballistic performance and stab protection in one vest or protection against a wider spectrum of projectile and fragment types. This requires advanced hybrid solutions for protective vests.

Following today’s standards, Twaron UD22 has been subjected to a range of stress and ballistic performance tests and meets the NIJ 0101.06 tumbling requirements. Twaron UD22 is the ideal solution for any new vest that needs to meet the NIJ level IIIA

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Subjected to heat and pressure the new Twaron PVB prepreg can be shaped into all manner of anti-ballistic protective equipment: helmets, insert panels for ballistic vests or shaped panels for vehicle protection. Producers of protective equipment no longer need to install and run expensive refrigerated storage facilities, since the new Twaron PVB prepreg can be stored under normal conditions for an extended period of time. Systems that are currently used in the industry – based on PVB-modified phenolic resins – have a very limited shelf life, since they react to high temperatures and therefore become unusable.

Performance tests have shown that, both in helmet shells and hard ballistic configurations, the new prepregs ballistic performance against bullets and fragments exceeds that of conventional PVB phenolic systems. In accordance with STANAG 2920, Twaron PVB prepreg has also been tested on temperature tolerance. These tests show very little differences in the ballistic performance between the plates stored at -20°C, +70°C and those stored at room temperature.

Twaron PVB film has been designed for usage with the same Twaron fabrics that manufacture protective equipment already used today – including Twaron CT736, Twaron T750, Twaron T741, and Twaron T734. During the production process the PVB film is layered and bonded with these Twaron fabrics to form a though, durable material.

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Lead researcher Matteo Pasquali, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and chemistry at Rice said;

We finally have a nanotube fibre with properties that don’t exist in any other material, It looks like black cotton thread but behaves like both metal wires and strong carbon fibres.

Carbon nanotubes, the building blocks of the fibre, which is as thin as a strand of DNA, combine the best properties of thermal and electrical conductivity, strength, modulus and flexibility.

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The new CNT fibres have a thermal conductivity approaching that of the best graphite fibres but with 10 times greater electrical conductivity, Graphite fibres are also brittle, while the new CNT fibres are as flexible and tough as a textile thread. The researchers expect this combination of properties will lead to new products with unique capabilities for the aerospace, automotive, medical and smart-clothing markets

The phenomenal properties of carbon nanotubes have enthralled scientists from the moment they were discovered in 1991. The hollow tubes of pure carbon, which are nearly as wide as a strand of DNA are about 100 times stronger than steel at one-sixth the weight. Nanotubes’ conductive properties for both electricity and heat rival the best metal conductors. They can also serve as light-activated semiconductors, drug-delivery devices and even sponges to soak up oil.

Unfortunately, carbon nanotubes are also the prima donna of nanomaterials; they are difficult to work with, despite their exquisite potential. For starters, finding the means to produce bulk quantities of nanotubes took almost a decade. Scientists also learned early on that there were several dozen types of nanotubes — each with unique material and electrical properties; and engineers have yet to find a way to produce just one type. Instead, all production methods yield a hodgepodge of types, often in hairball-like clumps.

Creating large-scale objects from these clumps of nanotubes has been a challenge. A thread like fibre that is less than one-quarter the thickness of a human hair will contain tens of millions of nanotubes packed side by side. Ideally, these nanotubes will be perfectly aligned — like pencils in a box — and tightly packed. Some labs have explored means of growing such fibres whole, but the production rates for these “solid-state” fibres have proven quite slow compared with fiber-production methods that rely on a chemical process called “wet spinning.” In this process, clumps of raw nanotubes are dissolved in a liquid and squirted through tiny holes to form long strands.

Shortly after arriving at Rice in 2000, Pasquali began studying CNT wet-spinning methods with the late Richard Smalley, a nanotechnology pioneer and the namesake of Rice’s Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology. In 2003, two years before his untimely death, Smalley worked with Pasquali and colleagues to create the first pure nanotube fibres. The work established an industrially relevant wet-spinning process for nanotubes that was analogous to the methods used to create high-performance aramid fibres — like Teijin’s Twaron — which are used in bulletproof vests and other products. But the process needed to be refined. The fibres weren’t very strong or conductive, due partly to gaps and misalignment of the millions of nanotubes inside them.

The next big landmark came in 2009, when Talmon, Pasquali and colleagues discovered the first true solvent for nanotubes chlorosulfonic acid. For the first time, scientists had a way to create highly concentrated solutions of nanotubes, a development that led to improved alignment and packing.

Until that time, no one thought that spinning out of chlorosulfonic acid was possible because it reacts with water, A graduate student in my lab, Natnael Bahabtu, found simple ways to show that CNT fibres could be spun from chlorosulfonic acid solutions. That was critical for this new process.

The fibres reported in Science have about 10 times the tensile strength and electrical and thermal conductivity of the best previously reported wet-spun CNT fibres, Pasquali said. The specific electrical conductivity of the new fibres is on par with copper, gold and aluminium wires, but the new material has advantages over metal wires.

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The enormous white façade that now hovers above the square is an architectural first made possible using aramid and carbon fibre from Teijin. This is the first time that these fibres have been applied together architecturally.

Teijin, the manufacturer of these super fibres and main founder of the new Stedelijk Museum, was proud to contribute to the museum’s reopening.

President & CEO of Teijin Limited Shigeo Ohyagi says;

The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam is a global pioneer in the field of art and culture, our philosophy is to grow and evolve in harmony with society. In addition to investing in our own facilities, we also prove our commitment in other ways by supporting regional projects and investing in art and culture.

Amsterdam’s famous Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art originally opened its doors to the public in 1895 to exhibit the new, “modern” art that was creating a furor throughout Europe. A century later, the old Museum itself was in need of modernisation. The new addition to the Stedelijk Museum appears to be a seamless whole and stands in stark contrast to the original 19th century building. The composite façade was designed by Benthem Crouwel Architects.

Due to their negative thermal expansion coefficient, a combination of Teijin’s Twaron and Tenax products were used to create the seamless surface the architects had envisioned. The use of these fibres for the Stedelijk Museum ushers in a new phase in their architectural application. While Twaron has long been used in car tires, bulletproof vests, sailboats and airplanes, this is the first time they have been used in architecture together with Tenax.

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The new product consists of 1000 filaments which means that it has higher performance than other yarns. The new yarn will be mainly used in soft anti-ballistic products for the police, law enforcement and military markets where the current trends are towards lightweight and comfortable bulletproof vests that comply with strict safety regulations. In a woven fabric the yarn could be used for anti-ballistic and anti-stab products. It has an excellent fragment resistance, it improves the resistance in exposure to the blast effects of roadside bombs and it provides better bullet protection.

Teijin Aramid invested millions of euros and resources to develop the high performing lightweight anti-ballistic product. Karl Henke, Business Manager Ballistic at Teijin Aramid says:

This new yarn is our response to the demand for lightweight ballistic protection, which itself is the result of the increasing threat of violence in society. Police officers, soldiers and even private citizens who require protection will start wearing a bulletproof vest earlier when the weight and comfort is even better than nowadays.

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