Rayon

Rayon is a manufactured regenerated cellulosic fiber. Rayon is produced from naturally occurring polymers and therefore it is not a truly synthetic fiber, nor is it a natural fiber. It is known by the names viscose rayon and art silk in the textile industry. more...

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History

Nitrocellulose

The fact that nitrocellulose is soluble in organic solvents such as ether and acetone, made it possible for Georges Audemars to develop the first "artificial silk" about 1855, but his method was impractical for commercial use. Hilaire de Charbonnet, Comte de Chardonnay, patented "Chardonnay silk" in 1884. The commercial production started 1891, but it was flammable, and more expensive than acetate or cuprammonium rayon. Because of this, production was stopped before World War I, for example 1912 in Germany.

Acetate method

Paul Schützenberger discovered that cellulose can be reacted with acetic acid anhydride to form cellulose acetate. The triacetate is only soluble in chloroform making the method expensive. The discovery that hydrolyzed cellulose acetate is soluble in less polar solvents, like acetone, made production of cellulose acetate fibers cheap and efficient.

Cuprammonium method

The German chemist Eduard Schweizer discovered that tetraamminecopper dihydroxide could dissolve cellulose. Max Fremery and Johann Urban developed a method to produce carbon fibers for use in light bulbs in 1892. Production of rayon for textiles started in 1899 in the Vereinigte Glanzstofffabriken AG in Oberbruch. Improvement by the J.P. Bemberg AG in 1901 made the artificial silk a product comparable to real silk.

Viscose method

Finally, in 1894, Charles Frederick Cross, Edward John Bevan, and Clayton Beadle patented their artificial silk, which they named "viscose", because the reaction product of carbon disulfide and cellulose in basic conditions gave a highly viscous solution of xanthate. Avtex Fibers Incorporated began selling their formulation in 1910 in the United States. The name "rayon" was adopted in 1924, with "viscose" being used for the viscous organic liquid used to make both rayon and cellophane. In Europe, though, the fabric itself became known as "viscose," which has been ruled an acceptable alternative term for rayon by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The method is able to use wood (cellulose and lignin) as a source of cellulose while the other methods need lignin-free cellulose as starting material. This makes it cheaper and therefore it was used on a larger scale than the other methods.

Read more at Wikipedia.org