Combinatorial Compounding
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0894-LL09-03.1
Combinatorial Compounding Nico Adams,a Martin Moneke,b Sergul A. Gulmus,b Dalil Chenouf,b Matthias Rehahn,b Ulrich S. Schuberta a Laboratory of Macromolecular Chemistry and Nanoscience, Eindhoven University of Technology, P. O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven , The Netherlands and Dutch Polymer Institute, P. O. Box 902, 5600 AX Eindhoven, The Netherlands b Deutsches Kuststoff Institut (DKI), Schlossgartenstrasse 6, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany and Dutch Polymer Institute, P. O. Box 902, 5600 AX Eindhoven, The Netherlands ABSTRACT
The development of novel polymer formulations is a complex as well as time and resource consuming task. To address this problem, a production-size twin-screw extruder with four additive feeding units was coupled with a flat film extrusion line to yield an integrated system for combinatorial compounding (CC) and high throughput screening (HTS). This allows the rapid synthesis of polymer formulations of varying compositions. When coupled to fast characterisation equipment, this set-up will allow the discovery of polymer formulations in a high-throughput manner. A number of possible rapid materials tests for screening purposes are discussed.
INTRODUCTION
Current methods for the development of new polymer formulations for commercial and industrial applications are usually multi-step procedures, which require considerable time and effort.[1] For any given polymer, the variable space is large: polymeric matrices are usually available in different molecular weights and polydispersity indices, with different degrees of branching (where applicable) and, in the case of copolymers, different co-monomers, comonomer concentrations and ways of incorporating the co-monomer into the polymer chain (blocks, random incorporation). In addition to basic variation in the polymeric matrix, several hundred additives are available on the market, which can be used to modify the polymeric matrix, depending on the envisaged application area of the final polymer formulation (e.g. antioxidants, UV stabilizers, anti-fogging additives, tribological additives, anti-static additives, flame-retardants, impact stabilizers etc.).[2,3] The potential complexity of the problem is obvious and further exacerbated by the need for increased speed in materials development together with a decreased materials consumption during the R&D cycle and a broad investigation of potential interactions between formulation components. In a typical development workflow, many experiments are required for the systematic study of the effects of additives and their potential synergistic interactions. This is usually accomplished using the one-variable-at-a-time variational principle.[1] Other attempts use statistical methods known from Design of Experiment.[4,5] Nevertheless, the experiments are undertaken with standard compounding equipment in a serial manner.[6] However, if the
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complexity of the formulation is high, the number of experiments that need to be conducted soon becomes prohibitive. Therefore, new, but potentiall
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