Plastics, Polymers and Composites
Ever since the Club of Rome published “The Limits to Growth” in the early 1970’s, the main target of any researcher and product designer has been to create products reducing the resource consumption. In addition, reducing weight of moveable assets became very important – which lead to the “start” of polymer chemistry about 100 years ago. World production of plastics grew from 10 mio tons in 1950 to more than 380 mio tons nowadays. In order to not only create lighter products, but also to save resources and raw materials, mineral microspheres can be used as light fillers in plastics, polymers, and composites, as they are compatible with plastisols, thermoplastics, Latex, polyesters, epoxies, phenolic resins and urethanes. As you can see, there is no limit to developing new and advanced products by formulating polymers with mineral microspheres.
Advantages
- Lightweight: The low density reduces weight, either by substituting heavier polymers of other fillers with higher density.
- Avoid shrinkage: The low thermal expansion coefficient compared to the polymer itself causes higher dimensional stability and will reduce shrinkage and warping.
- Better mechanical resistance: The hardness enhances the impact resistance, the flexural strength, the elongation at break, and the abrasion resistance.
- Better processability: The spherical shape and the lower heat absorption (lower density) allow for faster cycle times when producing shaped parts in moulding or extrusion processes, less heat needs to be cooled down.
- Better thermal insulation
- Better buoyancy
- Less permeability