Q&A
Source：德创化工Time：2020-04-01Hits：4556
TPE(Thermoplastic Elastomer) is a thermoplastic elastomer material with the characteristics of high strength, high resilience and injection molding. It has a wide range of applications, environmental protection, non-toxicity and safety, excellent coloring, soft touch, weather resistance, fatigue resistance and temperature resistance, excellent processing performance, no need of vulcanization, recycling and cost reduction. It can be molded by secondary injection molding, coated and bonded with matrix materials such as PP, PE, PC, PS, ABS, or molded separately.
TPE is a thermoplastic elastomer, TPE includes SEBS, SBS, TPV, TPES(TPR) and other substrates or sub-classes of thermoplastic elastomers with molecular monomer units. However, when TPE is mentioned in the industry, it generally refers to the thermoplastic elastomer modified by blending SEBS and SBS substrates. So, what kind of TPE is usually said in the industry, should it be divided into raw materials or modified materials?
Let's give a simple example: polypropylene, a high molecular material polymerized from monomers, is called PP for short, which belongs to the raw material. However, PP raw materials have poor properties such as rigidity, warping resistance, low temperature toughness, flame retardancy, etc. Some additives need to be added to improve the defects of PP raw materials. These blended modified PP materials are modified PP. Obviously, either homopolymerized PP or copolymerized PP may contain one or two polymerized monomers, but these PP materials all contain only one component, namely polypropylene. The modified PP contains two or more components, including flame retardant, glass fiber, cold-resistant agent and other auxiliary components besides polypropylene substrate.
TPE is a special kind of polymer material (with the dual characteristics of rubber and plastic). According to the definition of plastic raw materials and modified plastics, TPE undoubtedly belongs to the category of modified rubber and plastic materials. TPE both at home and abroad belongs to the category of modified materials. There is no obvious difference in performance between domestic and foreign TPE brands for most conventional applications. Only for some high-end special customized TPE material applications can the strength of different TPE manufacturers be reflected.
Thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) has the physical and mechanical properties of vulcanized rubber and the processing properties of thermoplastic. Because it does not need to undergo thermal vulcanization, the production of the product can be completed by using common plastic processing equipment. This feature shortens the production process of the rubber industry by 1/4, saves energy consumption by 25%~40%, and improves the efficiency by 10 ~20 times. It can be called another material and technological revolution in the rubber industry.
Because some foreign TPE product brands have mature market applications based on user specifications, industry recommendations, long-term usage habits and other factors, while some users do not know much about TPE, so some well-known imported TPE modified material brands are used as raw materials. However, the vast majority of TPE brands in China, especially TPE materials from small factories, have a low market penetration rate and are called modified granulation materials.
