Reactive Processing (RP: Reactive Extrusion) is a new compounding technology of the third generation that can add functionality to thermoplastic polymers by chemical reaction together with melt kneading in a twin-screw extruder or other extruder, enabling both high productivity and low cost.

We are focusing on the development of these technologies because they have various advantages.

In recent years, nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, silicates, and colloidal silica have been rapidly developing. The impact of these nanotech materials on the plastics industry is immeasurable.

The benefits of composites of plastic materials and nanotech materials are that they can provide polymers with numerous functions such as heat resistance, high stiffness, high elastic modulus, light resistance, electrical conductivity, high thermal conductivity, scratch resistance, transparency, etc.

However, high compounding technology is required to uniformly disperse and adhere these ultrafine particles in polymers.

Nano-compounding is performed via multifunctional silane coupling agents with multiple amino and epoxy groups.

First, the alkoxy groups of the silane coupling agent hydrolyze to form silanol groups, which migrate to the surface via hydrogen bonding with hydroxyl groups on the surface of inorganic materials such as nanofillers, and then form strong chemical bonds with the inorganic material surface through a dehydration-condensation reaction.

Next, the other functional group of the silane coupling agent, the amino group or epoxy group, chemically bonds with the functional group in the polymer to form a bond between the polymer and the nanofiller.

The key to nano-compounding is to determine which functional group of the silane coupling agent is appropriate for each type of polymer, and to control the effects of moisture content (humidity) during processing, reaction time, and temperature of the system.

Nanoalloys are the application of nano-compounding. Chemical bonding and compatibilization of Polymer A with Polymer B via nanofiller are done using a multifunctional silane coupling agent as well. In this case, we use several silane coupling agents with functional groups that do not compete with each other and add a specified amount of monomer containing special functional groups in a system with competing functional groups.

The potential of nanoalloy lies in the fact that polymers can be compatible with each other at the molecular level (nano-level), so that new polymers with completely different properties can be created, such as A + B = C instead of A + B = A' or B'.