| Abstract: | The objective of this study was to investigate the physical properties of silk fibers modified with dibasic acid anhydrides. These are potentially attractive modifying agents to reduce the rate of photoyellowing of silk during and following UV irradiation. Several analytical techniques were employed, which included the measurement of the basic mechanical properties (tensile strength and elongation at break), equilibrium regain, amino acid analysis, dynamic viscoelastic measurements, X-ray diffractometry, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The succinylated silk fibers, which have been conditioned under different relative humidity atmospheres, always exhibited slightly higher equilibrium regain values than those of equivalently conditioned glutarylated silks. The amount of the basic amino acid residues slightly decreased following modification with both succinic and glutaric anhydrides. The birefringence values and the isotropic refractive indices decreased only slightly, which suggests that the fine structure of the treated silk fibers was not significantly altered. The X-ray diffraction curves demonstrated that no changes in the crystalline structure were induced by reaction with dibasic acid anhydrides. The tensile properties of the modified silks remained more or less unchanged. Only the initial tensile resistance of glutarylated silks in the dry state significantly decreased. The dynamic viscoelastic behavior of modified silk fibers was characterized by a reduced thermal stability. In fact, the onset temperature of the prominent E peak corresponding to the molecular movement shifted to lower values. The surfaces of modified silk fibers were as smooth as that of the untreated control sample. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. |
