PlastFormance technology delivers unparalleled physical strength.
Features for different product segments
Our high-performance compounds have versatile applications across a wide range of industries. By adding various fillers, our compounds are not only thermally conductive but can also exhibit magnetic properties or provide radiation protection, among other benefits. This enables us to serve diverse industries, including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, medicine, and nuclear technology.
Electrically
conductive
+ THERMALLY CONDUCTIVE
Redox flow/
Li-ion batteriesFuel cells
IoT applications
Permanent and soft magnetic
Electromagnetic and high-frequency shielding
Radiation shielding
Magnetic properties
Multifunctional plastic compounds
Due to the rapid development in LED technology, the brightness is increasing, but so is the associated heat output. To dissipate this heat, heat sinks are attached behind the LED chips. Conventional LEDs are equipped with aluminum heat sinks because aluminum has excellent thermal conductivity of up to 230 W/mK while also being lightweight.
However, producing aluminum heat sinks by milling out the cooling fins is complex and expensive. Therefore, injection-moldable, thermally conductive plastic compounds are being considered as an alternative. These combine the free-form shaping possible through the injection molding process with the high thermal conductivity of the fillers.
To enable additional functions beyond acting as a heat sink, there is great interest in high-performance compounds that are also electrically insulating. This allows LED chips, including their conductive traces, to be bonded directly to the heat sink.
PlastFormance high-performance compounds
Conventional methods for manufacturing thermally conductive, highly filled compounds employ platelet-shaped fillers. These can achieve filler levels of approximately 50%. However, they are only conditionally suitable as alternative heat sink materials due to their limited thermal conductivity.
The problem lies in the fact that, as the injection molding melt solidifies, the platelet-shaped fillers on the surface solidify in the flow direction, while they arrange themselves randomly in the center of the component. This reduces the filler content, consequently lowering the thermal conductivity. Furthermore, the platelets arranged in the surface plane exhibit highly anisotropic material behavior, as their arrangement limits the thermal conductivity in the depth direction.
Therefore, PlastFormance has developed a revolutionary, patented process for producing highly filled compounds using powder mixtures instead of platelet mixtures. This not only increases the fill level and flowability of the compounds to up to 70%, but also, consequently, their thermal conductivity. Since the finest powder mixtures have homogeneous, isotropic properties, thermal conductivity is also ensured integrally throughout the component in all spatial directions. In addition to their excellent thermal conductivity, our products also exhibit very low electrical conductivity. This makes these innovative high-performance compounds ideally suited for injection-moldable heat sinks.
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