What is a thermoplastic elastomer?

The English name of thermoplastic elastomer is Thermoplastic Elastomer, abbreviation: TPE, thermoplastic elastomer also has other names, such as: plastic elastomer, thermoplastic / plastic rubber, environmentally friendly elastomer, etc.

Second, the concept of thermoplastic vulcanizates

Thermoplastic Vulcanizate (English: Thermoplastic Vulcanizate), TPV for short, Chinese name for Thermoplastic Vulcanized Rubber (English Thermoplastic Rubber), TPR for short, but this name is easily confused with other types of thermoplastic elastomers (English: Thermoplastic Elastomer) Together, because usually thermoplastic elastomers are also called thermoplastic rubbers, especially styrenic elastomers. At least in China at present it seems that "TPR" has become its proper name. The mention of TPR means SBS, SEBS Such styrene-based elastomers are thermoplastic elastomers based on the base material, which is inseparable from the large consumption of styrene-based elastomers in the field of consumer and end consumer products.

If the name of the thermoplastic vulcanizate is more detailed, it should be a thermoplastic dynamic vulcanizate (English: Thermoplastic Dyamic Vulcanizate). The word "dynamic" is added to specify the process of producing this thermoplastic vulcanizate-dynamic vulcanization. This This process refers to the vulcanization of rubber in the process of melt blending of rubber and thermoplastics. Of course, as the rubber is vulcanized, it is continuously mixed with the thermoplastic. Therefore, the vulcanized rubber is distributed as a dispersed phase in the continuous phase of the thermoplastic.

Here we discuss the common names of the names in Jiangsu and Zhejiang:

TPR generally refers to styrenic elastomers. It may be that the amount of styrenic elastomers accounts for 60% of the total amount of elastomers. This TPR was first developed in the United States and applied to the simple co-operation of PP and EPDM On the mixture, AES's PP / EPDM TPV also adopted the name. Later, the name may be called by Taiwanese and became popular in the mainland! (That is, we do not tell customers that our material PP / EPDM TPV is called TPR, because some customers think that it is a styrene elastomer and is SBS-based.

TPV generally refers to PP / EPDM-type dynamic vulcanizates, which is related to the fact that TPV made by the base material accounts for 80% of the entire TPV market! The name of TPV is later than TPR, because the performance of simple blended PP / EPDM is not very good. Later, a vulcanizing agent is added during the blending process to dynamically vulcanize the EPDM inside. Using this process, the material performance is greatly Lifting, in order to be different from the simple blended PP / EPDM, a TPV was created and applied to other materials!

TPO generally refers to impact resistant non-hard modified PP (physical blended TPO) and olefin polymers synthesized by direct reactors. Generally, it is most commonly used in bumpers and fenders in the automotive industry! The TPO synthesized by the direct reactor in the general automotive industry abroad is the majority, and the PP (physical blended TPO) modified with elastomers in the domestic general application is the majority! So sometimes I see that a raw material used by a car bumper production company says "modified PP material", but now it is not, generally write TPO, or simply write PP / EPDM XXX!