The Important Role of Additives: Enhancing Polymer Properties for High Performance Applications (Part 4 - Example of Common Agents and Polymer Compounding)

Hello and welcome to the fourth part of our plastic additives series.

Here you can read the other parts:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

In this post we discuss the common agents used for the different types of additives. We cover a broad range of agents, from anti-blocking to UV-stabilizer agents. Table 1 lists the different additives together with the corresponding agents.

Table 1: Plastic additives with their common used agents [1].

The keys to successful polymer compounding

Now with the knowledge of plastic additive agents, creating structural and functional materials may be easier. Structural polymer compounds are used in transportation (automotive, rail, airplanes, aerospace), machinery, and building industries. Their prime requirements cover high mechanical, thermal, and chemical properties. Functional polymer compounds on the other hand are used in (micro)electronics, communications, information technology, and biotechnology. Their prime requirements cover excellent electrical, magnetic, optical, and biological properties.

The essential of plastics compounding I have described in the post here and it can be summarized in this formula:

Successful polymer compounding = material properties + processing methods + end product properties

Thanks for reading and #findoutaboutplastics

Greetings,

Herwig

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Literature: 

[1] Gächter and Müller: Plastics Additives

[2] Sastri - Plastics in Medical Devices: Properties, Requirements, and Applications