Resins promise extreme temperature performance

A Sabic Innovative Plastics product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Nov 20, 2006

Extem resins meet growing industry demand for easy-to-produce parts that can withstand ever-higher temperatures and harsh chemical environments.

GE Plastics has announced the launch of Extem thermoplastic polyimide (TPI) resins, a new family of amorphous polymers that provide exceptional performance, while eliminating the drawbacks of semi-crystalline materials, imidised thermosets, and competitive amorphous thermoplastics.

GE's Extem resins deliver a powerful combination of melt processability and ultra-high thermal, chemical and mechanical properties.

They meet growing industry demand for easy-to-produce parts that can withstand ever-higher temperatures and harsh chemical environments, and remain stiff and dimensionally stable in extreme temperatures.

In addition, GE's Extem resins are inherently flame-retardant without the use of halogenated additives that can pose an environmental risk.

"GE's new Extem resin line represents a huge leap in cost-performance designed to help our customers grow their businesses", said Brian Herington, General Manager, High Performance Polymers, GE Plastics.

"Until now, customers needing an ultra-high-performance plastic were forced to choose between expensive imidised thermosets with high processing costs or high-performance semi-crystalline resins".

"New Extem resins help solve these challenges through top-of-the-line extreme performance, cost-effective processing, and the elimination of such secondary operations as post-moulding curing or crystallisation".

"We've radically changed the game with a new, much needed polymer technology that we think will go a long way to help our customers compete, grow, and succeed".

Herington added that GE Plastics expects the introduction of GE's new, world-class Extem resin to open up new application-development opportunities in such industries as semiconductor wafer handling, defence, oil and gas processing, aerospace, high-performance fibres, electronics, and automotive.

Compared with existing materials, GE's Extem resins provide a comprehensive array of outstanding high-performance properties.

Unlike high-end semi-crystalline polymers that exhibit poor creep resistance and dimensional stability under load at elevated temperatures, Extem resins deliver excellent creep resistance and stiffness under these conditions.

Further, semi-crystalline materials are always opaque, whereas GE's unfilled Extem resin grades are inherently transparent for greater design versatility.

As well as providing excellent performance, imidised materials such as polyamide-imide (PAI) and other TPIs are costly and must be machined from fully imidised stock shapes or melt processed.

They must then be cured for up to two weeks to eliminate brittleness and to enhance physical properties.

GE's Extem resins offer true thermoplastic melt processability with ultra-high performance as moulded to provide more cost effective, ultra-high-performance, and eliminate the need for post-curing, thereby offering processing productivity to customers.