SABIC Innovative Plastics' leadership in developing materials that reduce system costs and respond to its customers' sustainability needs has resulted in another landmark achievement: an expanded portfolio of Geloy* polycarbonate/acrylonitrile-styrene-acrylate (PC/ASA) resin blends that open new opportunities for key market sectors.
Originally developed for the automotive industry to deliver improved mechanical performance and extreme weatherability, SABIC Innovative Plastics' high-performance Geloy blends now comprise a robust new offering with specialized grades for broad use in healthcare, consumer electronics and electrical applications. This new advanced blending exemplifies the company's 75-year pioneering work in engineering thermoplastic breakthroughs to meet always-shifting customer and market needs.
Security Cameras Can Be Made Using SABIC Innovative Plastics’ Geloy* Resin Blends.
The expanded family of new Geloy blends offers non-halogenated flame retardance, exceptional low-temperature impact, and improved heat deflection temperatures. The blends allow customers to achieve key system cost improvements and sustainability goals via thin-wall molding, replacement of secondary painting with molded-in color, replacement of halogenated materials such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and extended product life.
"Combining historically separate material technologies to create unique blends is one of SABIC Innovative Plastics' strongest value-adds for customers," said Jos Braat, Global Product Market Director, SABIC Innovative Plastics. "Our ability to quickly develop new materials precisely tailored to the latest industry needs helps customers achieve a fast competitive advantage. Geloy blends and Lexan* copolymers clearly illustrate our latest success in this area and demonstrate our continuing leadership in materials innovation."
With New Geloy Blends, 1 Plus 1 Equals 3
With the expansion of its Geloy family, SABIC Innovative Plastics now offers the most comprehensive PC/ASA portfolio in the industry. The unique combination of high-performance PC and ASA materials in each grade delivers much more than the sum of these components. Building on superior weatherability performance vs. resins such as PC, acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) and PC/ABS blends - including up to five times better color stability after two years of ultraviolet (UV) exposure as well as significant mechanical property retention - Geloy blends add other targeted properties and advantages.
Some of these specialty blends leverage the properties of Lexan copolymers. Lexan EXL siloxane copolymer, for example, contributes exceptional low-temperature ductility and flame retardance to Geloy XTPMFR grades, enabling them to be used in demanding outdoor electrical/electronic (E/E) applications such as ATM machines, electrical enclosures and security camera systems.
Other blends feature the improved performance of Geloy XTW resin, which provides advancements in processing color stability as well as initial colorability, and delivers greatly improved weathering compared to standard ASA grades. These properties make them suitable for demanding long term color specific applications such as healthcare enclosures and transportation applications.
Geloy PC/ASA blends provide improved heat and mechanical performance, including up to five times the room temperature impact performance and up to 20 degrees higher heat deflection of standard ASA products. These properties are particularly important for applications that typically require a PC or PC/ABS resin but their environment requires UV protection for both mechanical and aesthetic performance.
Key grades include:
- Flame-retardant Geloy XTPMFR15 and XTPMFR10 blends, made without the use of halogenated additives, offer UL V0 performance as thin as 1.0mm. These grades incorporate Lexan EXL resin technology for improved flow/impact balance.
- Geloy XTPM405 blend offers unique low-temperature impact properties. Lexan EXL resin provides up to three times better impact performance at -30C and five times better impact at 0C vs. standard ASA products.
- Geloy XTPM blends offer improved initial colorability and up to five times better color stability after processing than standard PC/ASA blends.