Toray Develops High Tensile Strength Plastic Film

Japan's TORAY INDUSTRIES, INC. recently announced that they have successfully developed an innovative plastic film. The strength of this film is astonishing, almost comparable to stainless steel, and its maximum tensile strength is as high as 1,200 MPa. In addition to its exceptional strength, this material combines many of the advantages of polymers, such as being lightweight, insulating, and flexible.

Ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) is a special engineering plastic with a complex molecular structure and a molecular weight far exceeding that of ordinary polyethylene. This material is used to create high-strength fibers due to its excellent strength properties. However, due to the long molecular chains of UHMWPE and their easy entanglement, processing is extremely difficult. In particular, the production of high-strength films with biaxial tensile properties is even more challenging.

Toray has successfully overcome the above technical problems with its unique extrusion technology and biaxial stretching process. They created a highly directional nanoscale ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene molecular chain structure. Not only does the new film rival the strength of stainless steel, its tensile strength is more than twice that of commonly used industrial polyethylene terephthalate films and even reaches the level of the toughest aramid plastic films.

Toray's film has broad application prospects in superconducting, aerospace and other low-temperature applications. Its ultra-high strength can reduce weight and save space. In addition, the nanostructure of the film also gives it excellent thermal conductivity, with a maximum in-plane thermal conductivity of 18 W/(m·K), which is much higher than polyethylene terephthalate film. This makes Toray's films ideal heat-dissipating materials for flexible devices and other applications that require miniaturization, lightweight, insulation and flexibility.

With the increasing awareness of environmental protection, ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene has received widespread attention as an environmentally friendly alternative to fluoropolymers. Toray's film not only has excellent chemical resistance, low moisture absorption and low dielectric constant, but also shows high chemical resistance in the semiconductor manufacturing process, making it expected to become a strong competitor to fluoropolymers.