1000-in-1-filament

Development of Island-in-the-Sea monofilaments for toothbrush bristles with increased cleaning performance

The project objective is to simplify the production of flexurally rigid bicomponent fibres of the Island-in-the-Sea type with a high defined number of microfilaments for tooth cleaning. The free bristle ends in the toothbrush will have a flexible fine-fibrous structure to easily reach fissures. The high flexibility of the bristle ends in combination with their large surface area will significantly improve dental care. The overall working hypothesis of the project is to increase the cleaning performance of toothbrushes by using microfilament bundles as bristles embedded in a stiffening system (matrix). It will be investigated whether the manual production of filament bundles with a stiffening system (shrink tube), which was investigated in the previous project at DWI, can be transferred to an industrial production process with a polymer matrix stiffening system. The working hypothesis derived from this is that the above-mentioned bristles can be obtained by producing splittable bicomponent fibres of the Islands-In-The-Sea type by melt spinning instead of bundled microfibres. In this process, microfilaments are first embedded in a matrix during the spinning process. A further working hypothesis is that the separation of the microfilaments from the stiffening system at the tip of the bristles can be achieved without the addition of chemical agents, but in a targeted mechanical way by grinding or multidirectional mechanical forces radial to the longitudinal axis of the bristles. The SMEs along the production chain of brush bristles benefit from the innovative bicomponent bristles through increased sales due to novel products.

IGF Research Project 20778 N

Contact
Project Leader

Dr. Ahmed Mourran

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+49 241 80-23330/23
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