Properties

Polycarbonate enables the manufacture of technical high performance products in sophisticated forms and sizes. It improves quality of life and enhances safety and convenience for users and consumers all around the world.

Its main benefits include:

• High durability
  Polycarbonate plastic is an extremely durable material. This makes it the material of choice where long product life and reliable performance are critical.
   
• Shatter resistance
  Polycarbonate is virtually unbreakable. Through its high impact resistance, it provides greater safety and comfort for applications where reliability and high performance are essential.
   
• Transparency
  Polycarbonate is an extremely clear plastic that offers excellent visibility and transmits light better than alternative materials.
   
• Lightweight
  Polycarbonate’s light weight allows for architectural and design creativity. This leads to increased resource efficiency and reduced financial and environmental costs for transportation.
   
• Thermostability
  Polycarbonate plastic provides excellent heat resistance, which facilitates good hygiene conditions when cleaning at higher temperatures.
   
• Innovative potential
  The performance of polycarbonate is being constantly improved. Through technical and scientific innovation, new applications and product benefits are being offered, which enable market sectors to develop, providing consumers with additional services and benefits.

Applications

These characteristics make polycarbonate suitable for many applications, including:

Automotive

Polycarbonate moulded mirror housings, tail lights, turn signals, back-up lights, fog lights, and headlamps all contribute to a vehicle’s unique style.

Packaging

Polycarbonate bottles, containers and tableware can withstand extreme stress during use and cleaning, including sterilisation. They can be used to serve, freeze and reheat food in the microwave making them time and energy savers. Shatterproof and virtually unbreakable, polycarbonate is a safer alternative to glass. 

Appliances & Consumer Goods

Polycarbonate’s moulding flexibility styling and colouring possibilities make it perfect for use in electric kettles, fridges, food mixers, electrical shavers and hairdryers, while fulfilling all safety requirements such as heat resistance and electrical insulation. 

Electrical & Electronics

Polycarbonate’s light weight and impact- and shatter-resistant qualities make it perfect for housing cell phones, computers, fax machines, and pagers while at the same time withstanding the bangs, scratches and accidental drops of everyday use.

Processes

Polycarbonate is transformed from prills or pellets into the desired shape for its intended application by melting the polycarbonate and forcing it under pressure into a mould or die to give it the desired shape depending on the application. This process is repeated thousands and thousands of times for a given part, such as a cell phone housing. The part is generally then shipped to a manufacturer who assembles the final product. There are two dominant processes involved in making products from polycarbonate:

Extrusion:
The polymer melt is continuously pressed through an orifice called a "die", which gives the molten polymer its final shape. After passing through the die the melt cools rapidly and solidifies hence maintaining the given shape. This process makes it possible to create infinitely long pipes, profiles or sheets.


Injection moulding:
The hot polymer melt is pressed into a mould. The mould is then cooled, and the hot polymer solidifies taking on all the characteristics of the mould. This process is used to make single end products, such as housings, plates, bottles and many other applications

Superior processability combined with excellent mechanical and physical properties makes polycarbonate an outstanding engineering plastic, and the material of choice for many high quality, durable applications. This combination of characteristics also allows designers broad design freedom.

Recycling

PC applications are 100% recyclable, either mechanically or as feedstock, and energy from waste can be recovered at incineration plants. The most appropriate recovery options depend on numerous conditions. These include local legislation, plastics part design, access to sorting facilities and regional logistics and recycling costs.