Study on preparing of ultrahigh‐molecular weight polyethylene microporous materials by novel non‐dense injection molding method

In this article, a novel method called non‐dense injection molding with higher efficiency was proposed to prepare ultrahigh‐molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) microcellular open porous materials. The characteristics and the basic principle of the molding process were described, and the effects of shot size, injection pressure, and injection speed on microstructure, average pore size, porosity, and pore size distribution were further studied. The results showed that under the parameters of the shot size, injection pressure and injection speed set as 60%, 63.9 MPa, and 100%, the microporous UHMWPE materials were obtained with the average pore size 38.9 μm and porosity 38.3 vol% respectively, which were close to the microporous structure and properties of the commercial filter products prepared by traditional powder sintering method.