Page 73 - Plastics News September 2024

IN THE NEWS
The Science of Plastic Additives: Enhancing
Properties and Performance
oday the use of plastics has permeated
very deeply into human lives and can be
Tused in almost all areas of their exist-
ence as such components as packing material,
automobile trimmings, medical equipment, and
household utensils. Plastics are flexible in their
uses as they can be produced with the help of
numerous additives. These additives can help
boost certain properties and characteristics of
the plastics that will enable it for certain uses. In
this article, the different aspects of plastic addi- processing or as the product is in use. They al-
tives that shall include an understanding of what
they are, its types and the effects that it has at
the performance of plastics shall be discussed
in detail.
What Are Plastic Additives?
Plasticizers are additives which are put into the
plastics or which are added when the plastics
are being processed in order to improve on or
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September 2024
change on a certain quality of the plastics. These
materials can alter all the characteristic of the
plastic material including the mechanical proper-
ties such as the tensile strength, the elastic mod-
ule, the color and resistance from the effects of
the environment. The idea is to make the plastic
to be optimum for use, that is, to modify the ma-
terial to give the best performance possible.
Types of Plastic Additives
1. Stabilizers
Anti-oxidants play a major role in the preserva-
tion of plastics from the effects of environmental
conditions such as UV light, heat and oxygen.
There are two main types:
UV Stabilizers: These will not degrade plastics
whenever they are exposed to light where the
translation slightly different. UV is understood
to hasten grinding or wear of teeth apart from
changing the shade of the enamel and these
trays works on the principles of either absorbing
or emitting these beams.
Heat Stabilizers: These additives help in main-
tains its characteristic when heated as during
leviate problems like heat treatments which usu-
ally results into reduction of mechanical proper-
ties.
2. Plasticizers
They are incorporated to enhance prominence
of plastics since they possess high rigidity and
high degree of crystallinity. They function on the
principle of expanding the gaps within polymers,
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