FUNCTIONAL FILLERS | ADDITIVES
Functional fillers set to flourish
Functional fillers can lift the performance of polymers, enabling compounders to open up new application areas. Peter Mapleston looks at some of the latest developments
A huge variety of functional fillers – ranging from minerals through to engineered glass structures – can be added to plastics to extend performance and applications into areas not attainable with unmodified materials. It is a multi-billion dollar market and one that continues to grow. And while some functional fillers have been around in one or another form for decades, new developments in application and modification, as well as the emergence of new filler products, still occur at a remarkable pace. One technical expert who keeps a keen eye on developments (and is involved in quite a number of them) is Chris DeArmitt, an independent consult- ant who at various times in his career has worked at prominent functional filler companies such as LKAB Minerals, Applied Minerals, and Hybrid Plastics. One of the numerous interesting areas that he highlights is low-quartz fillers. Common mineral fillers such as calcium carbon-
ate, talc and mica have something of a reputation for causing wear during processing, but it is not the minerals themselves that are the problem because they are relatively soft. It is hard impurities, particu- larly quartz, that cause machine wear, DeArmitt
www.compoundingworld.com
explains. For this reason, low quartz levels have always been desirable. However, with concerns now being paid to possible detrimental health effects of quartz in mineral fillers, increasing attention has been focused on low quartz mineral fillers in recent years, he says. “There has been an upsurge in requests for functional fillers without quartz and new grades are appearing to meet that demand,” DeArmitt says. He cites the example of Kish Company’s Artic Minerals (for which he provides consultancy services), which has developed numerous fillers with levels of crystalline silica below 0.1%. These include Denz- Flex iron oxide and FiberFlex, a developmental mineral fibre with properties similar to wollastonite. Barium sulphate is the standard high-density filler for plastic parts used to dampen vibrations. When even higher density is needed, then iron oxides are selected (the density of barium sulphate is 4-4.5 g/cm3 is 5.2 g/cm3
while the density of pure iron oxide ). Iron oxide has been used for many
years by major automotive companies but its cost has precluded wider adoption in applications such as washing machines, for example. Kish Company subsidiary Arctic Minerals hopes this will change
August 2018 | COMPOUNDING WORLD 55
Main image: Artic Mineral’s DenzFlex iron oxide – in this case in a PEEK resin – provides an alternative to barium sulphate as a high density filler
PHOTO: CHRIS DEARMITT
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