additives | Electrically conductive
Right: Mackinac Polymers’s scientist Bill Cowell (left) and Chief
Scientist Ralph Locke with an attenuating
polyester under development for a medical application using nanopar- ticles on the polymer backbone
on pipes that will be used to show if there are any fractures in the pipe structure. Another project involves the development of polymer batteries. The company has customers in Asia, Europe, North and South America.
compounds that are present with or without graphene, as well as graphene on its own. Materials suitable for use as the nanoparticulate component include an inorganic salt or inorganic salts that contain a cationic component. There is no restriction on the polymer that can be used; a Mackinac patent (US9074053) mentions polyester polyols, copolyesters, polyacrylates, polysul- phides, olefins, polyamines, and polyurethanes. Particle sizes are of the order of 30-50nm. Phillips says the company’s technology enables pinpoint precision on where the additives are located in the polymer. “It’s very controllable,” he claims. As a result, it is possible to create materials with targeted conductivities of 10−14 4.7x106
to
S/m at 20°C, according to the Mackinac patent. Phillips says some customers are now close to
commercialisation of products made with the conductive polymers. The first is likely to be used for spray coatings
Antistatic developments Activity in the antistatic additives arena appears quite high at the moment, particularly in alternatives to carbon black. Finland-headquartered IonPhasE is developing and manufacturing static dissipative polymer additives called IonPhasE IPE. Petri Matikain- en, sales and marketing VP, says the company has seen significant annual growth in the past few years and he expects this to continue because of the technology change and new emerging application areas. IonPhasE IPE additives are ionically conductive
polymers (also known as inherently dissipative poly- mers or IDPs). Matikainen points out that the polymers are not actually electrically conductive but that their ion-conductivity is able to level out charge imbalances in the material and is therefore able to dissipate static fields. “In another words, material is able to equalise potential differences, adapt to the changing situation and prevent electrostatic discharge (ESD) in a controlled way,” he says. “Because of the tightened requirements from the
end users, we can see ongoing technology change in multiple application areas,” Matikainen says. “Tradi- tional ways to control ESD have been by using conduc- tive carbon black, migrating-type antistats and coatings. Nowadays material cleanliness, low outgassing and contamination are increasingly important. Also, international standards related to ESD protection have
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