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December, 2016 Wacker Silicone R&D to the Forefront By Florian Degenhart, Wacker Chemie AG
Munich, Germany —With 2015 sales of $5.8 billion and R&D expenditures of around $191 million, Wacker Chemie AG styles itself as one of the most research-intensive companies in the chemical industry. According to the company’s reports, it generat- ed about 37 percent of its sales from silicone products in 2015. The com- pany has recently released over a dozen new products including textile sensors made from thin silicone films, high-modulus silicone rubber grades, clear silicone encapsulants for LEDs and optical lenses, and additives for manufacturing wood- plastic composites. The company has also introduced an industrial-scale 3D printer for silicones. The new products are designed for a variety of applications across the automotive, electronics, lighting, and healthcare markets.
Industrial Silicone 3D Printing “Silicones are increasingly be -
ing used in several sectors due to ris- ing material requirements and the approaching limits of standard mate- rials,” says Robert Gnann, head of Wacker’s silicones business division. “The unique physical and chemical properties of silicones can be com- bined in several ways, and their excellent process properties have made them indispensable in many industries.”
Elastosil film being manufactured in a cleanroom in Burghausen, Germany.
and an industrial-scale 3D printer for silicones. “So far, it has not been possible
to print silicone parts with existing industrial 3D technology,” says Gnann. “The 3D process developed
The industrial 3D printer is
based on a drop-on-demand method developed by the company. The printer head deposits tiny silicone droplets on a substrate. The work- piece is then built up layer by layer.
The company is now offering a
trailblazing line of products led by two technologies: textile sensors based on extremely thin silicone films designed to enable a virtual reality display of body movement,
by Wacker, named ACEO®, is a mile- stone in additive manufacturing. With ACEO technology, it is possible to manufacture silicone parts and assemblies with complex geome- tries.”
The silicone is formulated so that the droplets flow together before the UV- curing process begins. The droplets and layers produce a homogenous workpiece similar to an injection- molded part. By using water-soluble support materials, overhang materi- als and internal lattices can also be created. The use of additive manufactur-
ing is growing rapidly in medical applications. Bio-modeling and cus- tomized geometries are particularly promising areas. Silicones are heat- resistant, flexible at low tempera- tures, transparent, and biocompati- ble. They are also easy to pigment and demonstrate good damping prop- erties.
Ultra-Thin Textile Sensors Three years ago Wacker intro-
duced its Elastosil® film. Since then, the company has been developing specific applications for the material with a particular focus on textile sen- sors, exploiting the electrical proper- ties of silicone. The film is embedded between two conductive electrodes made of carbon-black-filled silicones. Together, the layers form a flexible capacitor that can store an electric charge. If the silicone capacitor is subjected to tension or compression, its capacitance changes. The subtlety of these changes can be measured
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