Aug 6 2010
Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/16bcf1/polymer_bulletin) has announced the addition of Rapra Technology Ltd's new subscription "Polymer Bulletin - Silicone Elastomers" to their offering.
This Polymer Bulletin is a current awareness service from the Polymer Library, the worlds largest database dedicated to polymer literature. Each time the abstracts database is updated with new records (approx. every two weeks) you will be sent a bulletin alerting you to any items that relate to silicone elastomers.
Despite what appears to be a very small number of silicone elastomers available for development, both the market and the list of applications are large and still growing. There are different classes of these elastomers but the vast majority in use, according to Peter Jerschows Rapra Review Report (copyquest 841124), are of the HTV - high temperature vulcanising type, also known as solid silicone and high consistency rubber. Altogether silicone elastomers have a huge number of applications in Automotive, Medical and Household to name but a few. This is largely attributable to the excellent properties that they demonstrate, including wide ranging temperature stability, biocompatibility, inertness and low flammability. Even if these polymers do begin to burn they will do so very slowly and by-products have low or no toxicity. These factors, combined with low processing costs, show that silicone elastomers have good potential for even further development and this is progressing rapidly.