Toray Advances Nano-Alloy Technology to Develop Nylon Resin with 4 Times Better Damping Performance

Toray Industries has developed a damping nylon resin that maintains the high-temperature rigidity and moldability of standard nylon while having four times the damping performance of butyl rubber and other conventional materials.

The company has begun providing customers with samples of various parts to improve the comfort of electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles. The company plans to commercialize its new products in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2027.

While electric vehicles can reduce engine noise, demand for suppressing low-frequency road noise is expected to grow as exterior noise regulations become more stringent. Standard thermoplastic resins have limited shock-absorbing capabilities, so rubber-based materials such as butyl rubber are often used to suppress noise. However, these materials lack thermoplasticity and are not suitable for secondary processing, such as forming complex shapes and parts. In addition, they cannot maintain hardness and rigidity at temperatures as high as 120°C, limiting their use in automotive, electrical, electronic and other applications.

This challenge led Toray to explore polymer alloys that combine nylon, known for its excellent high-temperature rigidity and formability, with a resin that exhibits excellent vibration damping properties. Conventional alloying techniques produce dispersed structures at the micron level, which limits the ability to fully exploit these properties. By leveraging its proprietary NANOALLOY technology, Toray achieved a co-continuous structure in which each resin phase forms a continuous network at the 100 to 300 nanometer level. This breakthrough produced a nylon resin with excellent vibration damping properties, formability, and high-temperature rigidity.

Using its advanced technology, Toray demonstrated that its loss tangent, a key indicator of damping performance, is approximately 28 times higher than standard nylon resins and 4 times higher than butyl rubber. The new material's thermoplastic properties make it suitable for use in reinforced products containing glass fiber and other additives. In addition, the material's high-temperature rigidity is 80 times higher than butyl rubber while maintaining excellent vibration damping properties.

The new ultra-damping nylon resin can be applied to mobile parts, electrical and electronic components, industrial equipment, and building materials. Toray will continue to improve mass production technologies to support its deployment in these industries.