Materials
Polymers as Additives
A pinch of one resin can teach another one new tricks. Take a look at the promising results with four novel property enhancers for thermoplastics and thermosets.
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Now They Want Plastics To Be Heavy?
Plastics weigh in with added design freedom and environmental friendliness—especially when the alternative is lead.
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Plastics That Conduct Heat
Helping electronics, lighting, and car engines keep cool are some new roles for hermoplastics that are formulated to replace metal or ceramic.
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New Polypropylene/PPO Alloys Fill a Cost/Performance Gap
A brand-new family of thermoplastics for automotive and other markets offers an intermediate range of cost and performance between those of TPOs and engineering resins such as nylon, ABS, long-glass PP, and some modified PET and PBT materials. GE Plastics, Pittsfield, Mass., has broadened its Noryl range of PPO alloys by adopting a new matrix material: polypropylene. New patent-pending technology allows the incompatible PP and PPO materials to be blended so as to create new balances of stiffness, toughness, and heat resistance in a moderate price range. Initial Noryl PPX grades are priced between $1.20 and 1.80/lb.
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Metallocene PP & PE Weld Strongly to Each Other
Multilayer film applications such as packaging and diapers are just two areas that could benefit from spot welding (instead of gluing) polyethylene to polypropylene. Normally these two resins show poor adhesion to each other. But two years of research at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and at ExxonMobil Chemical in Houston show that metallocene-catalyzed polyolefins can weld to each other with bond strengths much greater than are possible with conventional Ziegler-Natta catalyzed polyolefins.
Read MoreNew Materials Rise to the DVD Challenge
DVDs are casting a new light on optical discs--quite literally, since new generations of high-density disc players are expected to use blue-green lasers with shorter wavelengths in order to read the smaller pits of new higher-density data discs.
Read MorePhoto-Graftable UV Absorber Gets the Yellow Out
Sanduvor PR-25, a uv absorber based on new photo-reactive chemistry, was aimed primarily at coatings when it was first launched a couple of years ago. Since then it has made headway in clear plastics, including flexible PVC, polycarbonate, PET, and other engineering thermoplastics.
Read MoreNew Alternatives for Environmentally Friendly Heat Stabilizers
In recent years, considerable effort has been expended toward the development of new stabilization systems for PVC processing, driven by a desire to move away from stabilizers based on heavy metals.
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