High Performance Alloys: Shifting the Balance

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If you’ve worked with engineering thermoplastics, you already know this. Every material has strengths and every material has limitations.

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It’s just how it works.

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Welcome to In Practice, where we go beyond theory and talk about how materials actually perform in practice.

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Today we’re talking about high performance alloys. And I’m joined by someone who spends a lot of time thinking about how to solve customer challenges in smarter ways. Doctor Kumar Parimal, thanks for joining me.

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Parimal, thank you. A little bit of an introduction: Parimal has more than 15 years of experience in polymer research and development, having studied chemistry at IIT Bombay, earning his PhD from Indiana University, and now working within our Americhem Global Research and Innovation team developing materials for demanding industries.

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You know what stands out to me, Parimal, is you approach innovation through a customer lens, always looking for where performance gaps might exist before they become design issues down the road. Right. The target for a research and development organization should be not to be reactive, but to be proactive.

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The approach should not be to put out the fire, but to prevent the fire from happening. And we do this by knowing what the requirement for a customer is. Some of the problems are obvious. Some of them are not.

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And it’s our goal to find those problems, identify those gaps, and come up with a solution before it actually happens.

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So Matt, to answer this question, let me ask you a fun question. Just imagine there are so many polymers in the world. Can you guess how many different kinds of polymers there are? Oh boy. Hundreds maybe? Maybe 600? There are a lot of polymers, like thousands of polymers.

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Some of them are synthetic, some of them are natural. Our DNA is a polymer. Plant cellulose is a polymer. We know about a lot of common polymers: PC, ABS, polypropylene. But to be realistic, when it comes to commercial application, there are about 200 different polymers.

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So if the question is, if there are already 200 polymers, why do we need more materials? Can they meet all the requirements? To answer that, every polymer has a very unique value set. Some are good with chemical resistance, some are good at high temperature, some have good stiffness.

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But when you look at the application part, most applications will not have just one unique value set. They need a combination of values for the application to work. And when you start selecting a material, you cannot just choose one material that meets all the requirements.

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So to think about that, there are two different approaches we can take. One is that we take a polymer which is lacking in a certain aspect, and we add an additive technology to enhance the property to meet the requirements. An alternate way is to think about two different polymers with two different value propositions and bring them together in one single solution.

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That’s interesting. So basically you’re saying, hey, I may want to enhance an attribute, and I may want to minimize the weakness of a particular polymer, and I may be able to dial that in through compounding. It’s not as simple as that, because not every polymer is compatible with each other. We need to understand the chemistry of the polymers and which polymers are compatible with each other.

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If we are trying to achieve a certain functional aspect in a polymer and we’re not using the right kind of chemistry, you can see in this particular example that because of incompatibility, the polymer is showing mismatch. It almost looks like marble. In fact, it looks like a delaminating effect, and the material will be very weak in properties. Finding the right chemistry can achieve the same functionality with alternate chemistries and create a much more homogeneous mix.

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Good aesthetics. Looks like a good-looking, consistent molded part. Yes. So that’s what we’re talking about today, is how Americhem’s high performance alloy platform can complement an application, shifting the balance, improving performance in one area without trading off something else.

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Right. So when it comes to highly demanding applications like medical or aerospace or certain electronics, we have very limited choices of material because of the needs for those applications. Two of the most commonly used materials in these applications are polyetherimide and polyphenylsulfone. These two materials are phenomenal in their value proposition.

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They work at very high elevated temperatures. They are inherently flame retardant. They can withstand autoclave. They are hydrolytically stable. They have good strength. So a lot of these applications, either of the two materials fit those requirements. But the question is, if there are two materials that are similar, then why do we need two materials?

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The reason being that the two materials are very similar in a lot of aspects, but they each have unique strengths. Polyetherimide is a very strong material. It has very high tensile strength and is very stiff. On the other hand, polyphenylsulfone is very impact resistant, especially at low temperatures and even at higher temperatures.

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So give me a real-life example. Where would an engineer use this in a particular industry? Think about a surgical tray application where the surgical devices are kept in there and sent into an autoclave machine. Accidents happen in life. You can drop a tray on the floor. If the material is not good enough or strong enough, it might crack.

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Think about aerospace. Traveling with a suitcase, you might bump into your luggage bin or your seat, and it might crack. So when you need all the strength of the material, at the same time you also need the ductility of the material. In the case of PEI, you have really good strength, but then you lack the ductility. On the other hand, you have polyphenylsulfone, which has very good impact resistance, but it does not have that strength or stiffness for a lot of applications.

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So now we’ve got two materials which are very unique, but can we bridge that gap and combine them together in a way where we can improve the ductility of a polyetherimide or, the other way around, improve the stiffness of a polyphenylsulfone? So as an engineer and compounder, are we just talking about blending these two together?

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It’s not just blending them together. It’s finding the right ratio to blend to meet certain requirements, using functional additives to enhance the properties of these materials, and supporting our customer from their specific need. So what you’re saying is it’s not perfection, but it’s trying to move a material in an area that enhances an attribute we’re really looking for.

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Exactly. And to show you an example, there is a test method called Gardner impact. It’s a practical way of doing an impact test where a weight is dropped in a channel tube and imparts energy on the material to see how much energy it can absorb before it breaks or cracks. In this particular example, you can change the weight and you can change the height from which the weights are dropped.

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The number on this chip represents the inch-pounds of force needed to break the material, where the failure happens. In the case of polyetherimide, you can see that when we have 100 inch-pounds of force, this material kind of shatters into pieces. Yeah, I mean, that’s instantaneous. That’s potentially catastrophic. And that’s what I was talking about. When accidents happen, you can drop something and it gets enough energy to have this kind of impact on your actual device or actual part.

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On the other hand, when we look at these alloys where we improve the ductility, you can see that when we went all the way up to 160 inch-pounds of force, we are still seeing a dent, an indent in the part, but it’s not shattering or breaking. So we can see how the strength of the material has increased, but at the same time, it’s still maintaining pretty high stiffness.

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Same energy. It’s the higher energy and still no breakage. Higher energy and no breakage. And these parts are done at the same thickness so that we can have an apples-to-apples comparison between how much of an impact the material can take. That’s a great example. The other aspect of this kind of technology is also that when it comes to these applications, aesthetics are always an important part of it.

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So we want to make sure that these materials have good colorability. To showcase that, I have some chips over here to show that these materials can be done in a very transparent way and achieve all the nice, vibrant colors that most of these applications need, as well as some opaque colors ranging from bright chroma colors to whites and lighter shades.

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Yeah. So I think we all know some of the natural colors of these resins, and they can be quite yellow, quite amber in color. These are pretty nice colors. And also one of the other attributes I want to mention about the new trend in this industry is laser marking. One of the key features of these alloys is that we can get a very nice laser marking on these materials.

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Yeah, very nice resolution of the mark, the logo. Going forward, this is going to be a trend to have laser marking on medical devices for better traceability. Let’s talk about more applications. Where do you think some of this high performance alloy chemistry is going to matter the most? I think there are four or five applications that we can think about.

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Medical definitely is something where we are looking into and evaluating some of our materials in applications. The other key application for this high-performing material is aerospace, where inherent flame retardance of the material is a very critical requirement. At the same time, you want to maintain the mechanical properties of the material.

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Electronics is another, with the global growth in the semiconductor industry and all the electronics applications. High-performing material for lightweighting and metal replacement to reduce weight, along with high heat resistance, is needed. Apart from that, there are a lot of applications in the automotive world, especially when the components are under the hood, where you see a lot of heat, a lot of chemicals, and automotive fluids. So we want good chemical resistance as well as high temperature performance.

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What about the molder and processability? Am I changing this meaningfully? Going back to the PEI/PPSU example, what does that do for processing? In most cases, since both these materials are processed at a very high temperature, they are in a high-temperature processing range. It’s not going to change the processing aspect significantly.

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That being said, polyetherimide is relatively easier to process than polyphenylsulfone. So these blends should have an impact on improving the processability of these materials. So enhancement in potential processability, enhancement in certain physical property performance. Sounds like a pretty interesting concept.

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Right. And that’s where innovation comes in, where we don’t have to reinvent a new material every single time. But just finding the right material choices, understanding the polymer, and bringing the value together is the way to think about solving a problem. Asking the right questions, understanding the application need. For a technology organization, the goal should not be to create a new product.

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Our goal should be to create a new technology. Since a company like us doesn’t produce resin, and we are resin agnostic, having a technology that can combine with many polymer systems is more valuable than creating a single product. Sounds very practical. Okay, so we’re going to enter into a phase of the conversation I like to call the Lightning Round.

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A few quick questions. Don’t overthink them. First thing that comes to your head with regard to these high performance alloys. Strength or toughness? It’s a combination of strength and toughness. High heat or impact resistance? Impact resistance. When you see a new material challenge, what’s the first question that you ask?

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I want to understand the application. As a material scientist, we understand the material, but we need to understand the application to find the right kind of material that fits into the application. So why are customers so quick to accept a material’s shortcomings? I would say it’s a lack of knowledge. It’s familiarity with previous experience using a certain material that they’re used to.

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So they want to continue working with that one without knowing a better solution exists. What excites you most about where high performance materials are heading? The most exciting part for me is understanding what the customer is looking for. Some of the needs are very obvious. Some of the needs are not so obvious.

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If we understand the full application, not just the molding part but the end application of it, we realize what the shortcomings are and we can make a better recommendation. Okay, finally, give me one word that describes your approach to innovation. Problem solving. That tracks.

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So let’s bring this home. If you remember three things from today, what I captured was first, high performance polymers almost always have trade-offs. Secondly, alloy engineering doesn’t eliminate those trade-offs, but it does allow you to shift more intentionally to a desired attribute. And then third, early material collaboration with the customer expands what’s possible in design and ultimately might yield long-term reliability.

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What would you add? My objective is not to think about creating a catalog of products, but my objective is to think about creating a catalog of technology so that we can combine a technology with a polymer to create a very unique and differentiated solution for a customer. That’s what my objective is. Customizable technologies. Customizable technologies.

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And we can achieve that only when we have a good understanding of the technology, not just a product. You know what I like about this conversation is that it challenges an assumption. For a long time, engineers have accepted certain trade-offs as fixed. But sometimes, if you look a little deeper and approach the problem differently, you can shift what’s possible.

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And that’s really what In Practice is all about. It’s not just theory. It’s not just about properties on a data sheet. It’s how materials behave under stress, how innovation shows up in controlled performance, and how curiosity leads to better engineering decisions. That’s high performance alloys, and that’s In Practice. Thanks for joining us today.