NOVEL THERMOPLASTIC ELASTOMERS FOR UNIVERSAL OVERMOLDING ON DISSIMILAR THERMOPLASTICS

Overmolding thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) onto rigid thermoplastics has been an explosive trend in the last decade. Thermoplastics are used in various applications, including PP, PS, ABS, copolyester, SAN, PC etc.. Recently, many TPEs have been uniquely developed to bond to specific substrate materials based on surface energy or polarity match between the elastomer and the thermoplastics. However, these TPEs are usually not capable of bonding to different thermoplastics with dissimilar surface energy, i.e., PP and copolyester. A new class of TPEs has been developed with the ability to bond to dissimilar thermoplastics, including PP, copolyester, ABS etc. This paper covers the varied aspects of this technology