Electrically Conductive Polymers

When you need the benefits of polymers, with the performance of conventional metal components, you need KONDUCT anti-static, static dissipative & conductive materials.

Why use Electrically Conductive Polymers?

As with thermal management applications, electrical conductivity is traditionally thought of as the realm of high conductivity metals. But it doesn’t need to be!

By incorporating KONDUCT additives into your formulations, you can design and manufacture polymers with varying levels of electrical conductivity.

This allows designers to exploit the many advantages of polymers, with the added benefit of being able to tailor the electrical conductivity of the end material to suit each application, by varying the type and amount of additive used.

Electrically Conductive Additives

There are many additives which can be incorporated, with the common ones falling into several groups. There are permanent and non-permanent options and wide ranging abilities to increase conductivity. The final selection will depend upon the specific application requirements and ultimately the level of conductivity required.

Metals – typically in the form of powders, flakes or fibres.

Carbon based – traditional additives such as carbon black or fibres, but also newer developments such as carbon nanotubes (CNT’s) and graphene.

Polymer based – inherently dissipative polymers.

Migrating antistatic agents – cost-effective, but only for short-term applications.

Processing

When compounding polymers for electrical applications, the dispersion of the additive selected is of critical importance to the overall performance. This is particularly key with additives such as CNT’s and graphene, where the low addition rates possible mean that fully optimised dispersion is necessary in order to achieve percolation and hence a conductive network.

Measurement

Typical measurements taken and utilised would be surface resistivity, volume resistivity and, for EMI shielding applications, specialised techniques for measuring the percentage of incident electromagnetic radiation which is reflected and/or absorbed by the shield material.

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