Masatoshi Aoyama

History of Polyester Resin Development for Synthetic Fibers and Its Forefront

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) was invented about 50 years ago, and now it is widely used for synthetic fibers, films, bottles, and so on. In a half century, the polymerization process has been improved, for example, from DMT method to direct polymerization method and from batch process to continuous one. Various new polymerization catalysts also have been developed. For production of fibers, a variety of copolymerization composition has been developed to control and improve the properties, such as flame retardancy, dyeability, solubility, and shrinkage. In addition to PET, polyethylene naphthalate, polybutylene terephthalate, and polytrimethylene terephthalate are now used for various usages. Nowadays, bio-based polyesters polymerized from bio-based ethylene glycol, propylene glycol, terephthalic acid, and so on are also developed and some are already commercialized.