Group NanoXplore, a Canada-based company specializing in the production and application of graphene and its derivative materials, announced that it has added graphene-enhanced plastics to its product offering. Compounded pellets for different grades of Polyethylene (PE) and Polycarbonate (PC) are already available and additional plastics are to soon follow.
NanoXplore has a capacity of 400 metric tons per year of compounded master batch pellets. The company has been taking orders and sampling pellets to customers in Europe and North America since January 2016, and it has been focusing recently on polyethylene (PE) thermoplastics and has obtained significant multi-functional improvements in performance compared to base resins. For HDPE at 0.5 weight% graphene loading, a 15% increase in tensile strength was achieved without degrading material toughness. For LLDPE at 15 weight% graphene loading, thermal conductivity was doubled, yield strength increased by more than 30%, and electrical conductivity was increased to the anti-static range.
NanoXplore's ability to tailor the final properties of the plastics by adding graphene paves the way for engineering plastics in real world products such as electric motors, cellphone and tablet casings, and automotive and aerospace parts.