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Material and application potential of e-beam crosslinked thermoplastics

Polymers are increasingly used in almost all areas of industry, due to many advantages of polymers, e.g. versatile properties and freedom of design. High performance polymers are often used when high thermal and chemical loads occur, as e. g. during the production of electronic components (soldering process) or inside the engine bay of automobiles. The manufacturers have therefore the ambition to apply less expensive engineering thermoplastics as e. g. polyamides, even if the limits of the thermal short-time performance are reached. An increase of the performance under thermal load of engineering thermoplastics can be achieved through crosslinking with electron beam irradiation. The current literature shows that very little and insufficient research studies have been done on the factors of influence on the crosslinking of polyamides.

Systematic investigations on PA66 and PA6, which are applied preferably in tribological and electronic applications, are carried out. The scope was to examine the materials (additives) and processing factors of influence (processing and irradiation parameters) on the electron beam cross-linking of these materials. The influence of electron beam irradiation, which causes structural changes, on the thermomechanical, physical and tribological properties are shown by means of suitable investigations (microscopy, thermal analysis, stress crack tests, mechanical and tribological investigations, aging tests). Finally, the application potential of e-beam crosslinked polyamides for electronic and tribological applications is evaluated.

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