HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPOUNDS | MATERIALS
With demands on thermoplastics continuing to increase, compound developers are looking to additives and reinforcements to
deliver.Peter Mapleston reports
Formulating for performance
Thermoplastics are increasingly called on for applications requiring superior mechanical, chemical, and thermal properties and meeting these demands is often only possible by selecting the most promising polymers then optimally enhancing them using additive and reinforcement technologies. The latest developments provide improvements in how high-end thermoplastics perform in use, but also during processing. Joe Lichtenhan, VP for New Development at Hybrid Plastics, says the company has been collaborating with Sarah Morgan at The University of Southern Mississippi’s School of Polymer Science and Engineering on further study and development of additives based on polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes, or POSS (the company has been offering some POSS-based additives for several years). They say POSS is becoming a “go-to additive” for processing of aromatic thermoplastics when molecular-level precision of dispersion and reproducible formulation is required. Lichtenhan and Morgan have told Compound-
ing World that additives that can be utilised at low percentages to expand the performance and processibility of PPE, PPS, PES, polyimide, fluoro- polymer, PAEK, and PEI are of growing interest to
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the specialty high performance polymer industry. They say that control of rheology, crystallisation, and filler dispersion is of critical importance for new additive manufacturing and thermoplastic composite processing techniques for emerging applications in aerospace, electronics, and energy sectors. Traditional processing aids are often ineffective in high performance polymers, due to their temperature limitations and undesirable side effects, such as reduction of thermal stability or mechanical properties, they say. Hybrid Plastics’ nanostructured additives are said to improve processibility, enhance dispersion, and afford nucleation control within the desired processing window. The precisely defined compo- sition, size, and topological features of the POSS family provide effects that are derived from the rigidity of the inorganic central core, which enables large molecular surface area and volume contribu- tions to formulations. Each silsesquioxane core contains an external
organic group for compatibility, reinforcement, or reactivity. For high temperature thermoplastics, the organic group on POSS is generally phenyl, provid- ing compatibility. The additives are said to be well suited for masterbatching to provide ultimate
November 2021 | COMPOUNDING WORLD 55
Main image: BASF’s latest carbon fibre reinforced Ultaramid Advanced grades target metal replace- ment demands for reduced weight and enhanced performance
IMAGE: BASF
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