Rare earth luminescent fiber: it takes time to attack the city

Self-luminous materials in the natural world are numerous, ranging from the Ming dynasty in the ancient Chinese legend to the radium element found by Madame Curie. However, from the development of society to today, people are not only demanding more and more luminescent fibers. At the same time, more attention is paid to the safety and environmental protection of fiber materials. Both radium elements and traditional fluorescent materials have some disadvantages such as toxicity, radioactivity, low luminescence brightness and short duration, which limits their application fields. As a result, a new generation of luminous fiber materials came into being under the unremitting efforts of researchers at home and abroad.

New fiber materials promote new products

The rare-earth noctilucent fiber is a new type of high-tech functional fiber. It is based on polyethylene terephthalate, uses rare earth aluminate luminous materials and nano-auxiliaries, and is made of special spinning technology with noctilucent Storage of polyester filaments. The rare-earth luminescent fiber is a kind of modified polyester, whose performance is close to that of polyester and the performance of the formulation. At the same time, it can also be used to develop the warp knitted fabric not only has the performance of clothing but also has a certain decorative properties. Such new fiber materials generally appeal to consumers, especially young consumers, to meet their pursuit of fashion and fashion.

Cross-stitch embroidery was a manual technique that was popular in the past few years and was deeply loved by the common people. It is a special method of embroidering thread and cross cloth, using cross-weaving cross-stitch method, with a special coordinate pattern for embroidery, anyone can embroider the same effect of an embroidery method.

However, after nearly 20 years of development and promotion. Cross-stitch also gradually began to fade. The reason for this is actually that cross stitch has not had much breakthrough in product innovation for so many years. Although manufacturers vary their patterns from time to time to attract consumers. However, it is nothing more than flowers, birds, insects and pavilions. In recent years, cross-stitch shops that used to be scattered all over the streets have become mostly zero. Products are attached to a number of craft shops or even supermarkets, canteens, etc. for sale.

However, the advent of rare-earth luminous fibers, it seems that the traditional cross-stitch industry and even the embroidery industry saw a glimmer of innovation.

Huang Xinying is the boss of an embroidery shop in Suzhou and has been focusing on managing her own embroidery business. Her shop also sells various cross stitch products in addition to traditional embroidery. In the face of ordinary mass consumers, she plunged to a cross-stitch that was cheap and expensive; customers who experienced taste, appreciation and appreciation sold the embroidery crafts to them. In her mind, the material of embroidery products has always been nothing more than silk, cotton or wool. When she first saw a splendid thread from a salesman who produced rare-earth optical fibers, she was keenly aware that this was an opportunity for innovation in the embroidery industry.

About half a month later, the first batch of cross-stitch products embroidered with luminous fibers placed her on the counter. The eye-catching billboard was also hung in the door of her shop. First came to buy her luminous cross-stitch is a group of college students from outside travel to Suzhou. Young consumers are quicker to accept new things, and at the same time this type of cross-stitch products that can shine at night is indeed more fashionable, in line with the concept of consumption of young people. So, the products that were quickly embroidered by luminous fibers stood out in the highly competitive Suzhou embroidery store. Huang Xinying also made a lot of pride with this cross stitch new product.

However, then she took advantage of the rare earth luminous fiber embroidery thread applied to the traditional embroidery products but fell to a defeat. Most of the customers who recognize the traditional Suzhou embroidery feel that this luminous product is too fancy and loses the charm of Suzhou embroidery with a strong history. In fact, tradition and innovation often take a long time to get together for common development. Looking at the history of embroidery, it took quite a long time to go from single-sided embroidering to double-sided embroidering and even later double-sided embroidering. Huang Xinying’s spirit of innovation is beyond reproach, but it still takes time to draw on.

In addition, ropes made of rare-earth luminous fibers have also been widely used in such areas as night rescue, consumer emergency and so on. At the same time, there are data showing that rare-earth luminous fibers in developed countries such as Japan have been made into fishing nets and put into actual production. Using the luster of some fish in the ocean, using rare earth luminous fiber fishing nets to fish it can increase fishing production to a certain extent.

The appearance of each new type of fiber will more or less change our daily production and life to varying degrees. At present, some scholars predict that in the near future, textile and apparel products made from rare earth luminescent fibers will enter our daily lives on a large scale.

New fiber materials need further improvement

Chinese people have had a natural curiosity and strong worship for the phenomenon of nighttime light since ancient times. The legendary Night Pearl has always been a favorite chatter for everyone. At the same time in China's Song Dynasty also recorded the so-called "cow painting" story. What he said was that this painting could not be seen in the daytime. In the evening, you can see a lying cow in life. Although there is still no way to determine if there is such a painting, if it actually exists, it must be painted with a luminescent material.

At present, the development and production level of rare earth luminescent fibers in China is still far behind the developed countries. Probably the main production methods are melt spinning, solution spinning method, surface coating method, bonding and other several. However, no matter what kind of method is still not mature, most of them are still in the stage of exploration.

In actual operation, the manufacturer of rare earth luminescent fibers in China uses the most surface coating method with relatively simple operation method. However, in this method, the rare earth luminescent compound is dissolved in a suitable solvent and mixed with a binder such as a resin solution to prepare a color paste. The fibers are placed in such a color paste and subjected to row coating to obtain luminous fibers. However, the problem is that the luminous fibers obtained by this method are not very satisfactory in terms of washability, acid and alkali resistance, and the like.

According to relevant experts, rare earth luminescent fibers have not been produced in any way relative to other fibers. And some production methods are faced with a specific problem of high production costs and are unable to carry out industrial production. Some simple methods, such as the luminescent fiber products produced by the surface coating method, have some defects. Therefore, it is a matter that researchers and manufacturers have been dreaming about as soon as possible to develop a rare earth luminous fiber production method that satisfies various requirements.

In addition, rare earth luminescent fibers currently have specific problems that are expensive and difficult for the market to accept. In recent years, it has been affected by the dual role of international market conditions and the adjustment of relevant national policies. The price of rare earth luminescent compounds has been on a rising trend, and some products have even risen more than 6 or 7 times before the price increase. This rare earth luminescent compound is also the main raw material for producing rare-earth luminescent fibers. It is understood that this trend of rising prices has not yet stabilized the signs.

As early as the beginning of 2009, a company producing rare-earth luminescent fibers in Jiangsu had tentatively put a number of apparel products made of this fiber into the market. However, the market's reaction to this batch of products is surprisingly cold talk.

The reason for this is that, first of all, there is a serious shortage of promotion and propaganda. Because it is tentative sales, there is no so-called powerful advertising, promotion, and a series of market-oriented operation methods. Second, the market positioning of the batch of apparel products was a serious mistake. It is well-known that for rare-earth luminous fiber clothing, entertainment venues, stage performances, or various dark places such as Diba should certainly be the preferred sales target. However, this company has produced a series of ordinary luminous fiber casual clothing step by step to the market to ask for directions. Moreover, the general consumer awareness of rare-earth luminous fiber clothing products is also seriously inadequate. Randomly asked about 20 ordinary consumers, basically no one knew exactly what the new material was. In addition, high product prices have also become a barrier for sales of rare-earth luminous fiber garments. The cost of raw materials for a piece of clothing has been as high as 1,000 yuan, plus labor wages, sales costs, production costs and so on. It can be imagined that rare-earth luminous fiber garments will have a certain price if they want to maintain a certain profit. However, consumers are naturally not buying at a high price when they are very upset about this new type of fiber material.

After superimposing various factors, it is also reasonable for the rare-earth fiber-optic clothing products produced by this company to be lost in the market.

After experiencing the failure of this test, the company painstakingly began to study ways to reduce product costs. It is understood that the current practical method is mainly to consider the aspects of fabric blending. That is to say, rare earth luminescent fibers and other natural fibers and chemical fibers are jointly used to manufacture apparel fabrics to reduce the cost of products. However, due to the large surface friction coefficient of rare-earth luminescent fibers, the production process requirements have increased. At the same time, since the proportion of rare-earth luminescent fibers used in the blending process has a direct impact on the product cost, the luminescence effect of the fabric is directly related. Therefore, this will be a dilemma for enterprises.

All in all, the successful development of rare earth luminescent fibers fills a gap in China's fiber industry is a good thing. However, as a new fiber product, it still has many problems that we need to solve. At present, the continued improvement of the performance of rare-earth luminescent fibers and the development of products with higher applicability and cheaper prices are the goals we should pursue. This is also one of the necessary conditions for the rare earth luminous fiber textile and apparel products to be accepted by the market as soon as possible.

The quality of new fiber materials

In fact, the principle of luminescence of rare-earth luminescent fibers in the absence of visible light is a more complex reaction. In short, when rare earth ions are exposed to visible light, electrons jump from the ground state or the lower energy level to the upper energy level, and the light energy is stored in the fibers. In the absence of visible light, the electrons return to the ground state or the lower level, releasing the energy stored in the fiber and emitting light.

The main advantage of rare earth luminescent fibers compared to traditional metal halides is that they are non-toxic, non-harmful, and non-radioactive. In addition, they do not require dyeing, which inevitably hinders the environmental impact of the finishing process. From the perspective of human safety and environmental protection, rare-earth luminescent fibers have a decisive advantage. At the same time, the luminous brightness and duration of rare-earth luminous fibers are much better than those of conventional metal halides. However, the only drawback is that the price of the product is much higher than the former, which also provides an opportunity for unscrupulous traders to extract huge profits.

In early 2011, a website convened a friend to start a group purchase of a luminous slippers. The original price of more than 100 yuan product purchase price only needs more than 20 yuan. The website also details the style of this slippers, and it also shows that this is made of rare-earth luminescent fiber material. Not afraid of washing, non-toxic and harmless to the human body and so on. Excellent product quality coupled with low prices quickly attracted the attention of many online shopping owners.

Ms. Zhang also showed a strong interest in this rare earth luminous fiber slippers. The so-called shoppers. After comparing the prices of similar products in several online stores, she finally failed to withstand the temptation of low prices to place orders. After about 10 days, she received the slippers through her courier company.

At first glance, this pair of slippers, whether it is style, color and size are still more in line with the requirements of Ms. Zhang. After turning off the lights at night, she also deliberately looked at the slippers on the bed and did indeed send out a faint light. Ms. Zhang also secretly happy that she won't worry about her being unable to find slippers at night. However, it was not long after several times using this pair of slippers made of rare earth luminous fiber. Suddenly she discovered that the place where her feet touched the slippers after she had taken off her shoes became a “luminous skin”.

Inadvertently found her shocked, it is clear that this is caused by the shedding of light on the slippers. After accessing a large amount of information on rare-earth luminescent fibers on the Internet, Ms. Zhang realized that she had purchased fake and shoddy products. Because the true rare-earth luminous fiber is analyzed according to its production process, there is no occurrence of shedding light-emitting substances. After several negotiations with the website and network operators, Ms. Zhang returned the postage courier fee before returning the 20 yuan loan. Due to the low price, more netizens who participated in buying slippers chose to be silent.

In fact, it is not uncommon to purchase counterfeit products through the Internet. At the same time, due to the hidden nature and special nature of online shopping, it is difficult for all levels of regulatory authorities to do everything. However, our consumers should also realize a constant truth. That is "no good goods are cheap, good goods are not cheap." Practically speaking, if the price is more than 20 yuan, it is not enough to use rare-earth luminescent fibers to make even the cost of production. Businessmen are all pursuing interests as their fundamental purpose. In a loss-making business, no one will do it.

If the quality of rare-earth luminous fiber products can still be found by adults, the problem of luminescent materials applied to children's toys is a very difficult problem.

In real life, toys that glow spontaneously at night are very much loved by children. In the past, some toys mainly used the effect of some light-emitting plastics. However, the luminescent plastics are mainly doped with some radioactive materials in ordinary plastics, such as 14C, 35Sr, 90Sr, and luminescent materials such as ZnS, CaS. These compounds are excited by visible light to emit visible light. This kind of material has a certain radioactive danger, so it is gradually abandoned and no longer used. Instead, traditional metal coatings are used to process the products.

The traditional metal halides also have certain toxicity, and it is naturally self-evident that they use hidden toys for post-processing of children's toys. Everyone knows that infants and toddlers have a habit of sucking when they play toys. If a parent buys a toy that is precisely a luminous product that is processed and produced using metal halides, it is no doubt that children can eat toxic substances directly into their stomachs. Moreover, the harm of such toxic substances is a process that will only show up once it accumulates. The severity of the harm is probably worse than acute poisoning.

The rare-earth noctilucent fiber is a new type of high-tech functional fiber. As long as it absorbs any visible light for 10 minutes, the fiber can store light energy in the fiber, and continuously emit light for more than 10 hours in the dark state, and has various colors of light. , Such as red light, yellow light, blue light, green light and other color and color light rare-earth luminous fiber not only beautiful and colorful, and the final product can not be dyed, not only to avoid the impact of dye on the fiber luminescence, but also to avoid the dyeing process The waste water produced is seriously polluted by the environment.

Therefore, rare-earth luminous fiber has a very broad market prospect. Further research and development can not only promote China's technological and economic progress, but also have good social and economic benefits. Under the premise of guaranteeing quality, the promotion of textile and apparel of rare-earth luminous fibers is bound to achieve a multiplier effect.

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