ABSTRACT Thin polymer strips and films are critical components in flexible electronics, packaging, and energy storage systems, yet their production through conventional extrusion, rolling, and blow‐forming processes involves energy‐intensive, complex processing. A major challenge in processing polymer strips by machining is severe chip curling. Similar to ribbon curling, this phenomenon arises from a velocity gradient across the chip thickness. Thin adhesive tape applied to the workpiece surface as a geometric constraint surprisingly suppresses this curling by enforcing a more uniform velocity distribution across the thickness, thereby producing flat and straight strips. Using this approach, polypropylene (PP) strips with thicknesses of 20–200 μm were directly produced through a single‐step cutting process, where the chip—typically regarded as waste—is the end product. Compared with conventional roll‐to‐roll manufacturing, the cutting‐based process reduces energy consumption by more than 65%. In addition, strips produced under constrained cutting exhibit superior mechanical properties and surface finish compared with those produced under free cutting. This work establishes adhesive tape–constrained cutting as a single‐step processing route for the processing of thermoplastic polymer strips, with enhanced molecular orientation, mechanical properties, and surface quality relative to conventional processing.
Mohanty et al. (Wed,) studied this question.