Overview | Recent Advances

Functional Additives Research provides customers with technology and materials that improve the performance of their products. Our Functional Additives (modifiers and stabilizers) enhance the properties of polymers, offering higher impact resistance, better toughness, greater melt strength, faster processing speeds, superior weatherability and increased heat stability. Our coatings technology includes polymeric binders for antifoulant paints used to protect large ships. Our applications expertise leads to better windows and glass containers. Our catalysts optimize production of polymers.

Our primary challenge is to develop new technologies that will expand our businesses. We make use of five essential disciplines in pursuing this challenge.

Polymer synthesis A common theme in this area is the design and synthesis of specific polymer architectures to achieve targeted properties. For example, we use emulsion polymerization to make core-shell polymer structures that serve as impact modifiers for plastics and to make high molecular weight copolymers that facilitate processing. Another technique, radical solution polymerization, results in copolymers and terpolymers for erodible, antifoulant marine coatings. Polymer synthesis is also very important for our catalyst group.

Polymer science Expertise with polymer blends, reactivity, processing and characterization provides the foundation for designing new polymer architectures and for knowing how our polymeric materials actually function.

Chemical vapor deposition(CVD) CVD techniques deposit metal, metal oxide and metal nitride films onto surfaces—primarily glass—to improve optical and functional properties.

Organometallic and organic chemistry This capability provides the basis for the design of new catalysts, the design of new precursors for CVD and the development of new, reactive monomers for use in antifoulants.

High-throughput research techniques These skills allow us to work faster, to run experiments on a smaller scale, to evaluate significantly greater experimental space and to rapidly exploit new discoveries.

Visit our Functional Additives business unit page for additional information.