Recently, Dow Plastics USA has developed a "revolutionary" new catalyst for producing polypropylene copolymers with "unique molecular structures."
Dow's Versify propylene/ethylene copolymer products have a maximum ethylene content of 15%, making the material highly elastic. According to Mark Murphy, global head of technology at Dow, this new catalyst enables the introduction of a high proportion of ethylene molecules into the molecular backbone of polypropylene, creating new products with previously unimagined properties. The new material has a narrow molecular weight distribution (MWD), but has a wide crystallinity distribution. Therefore, the material has a wide melting point range, a wide range of suitable processing temperatures, and a melt flow rate (MFR) value of 2.0 to 2.5 g/10 min, which is characterized by high transparency. Sexual, elastic and soft touch. Dow expects that the Versify grade will be applicable to all PP applications such as packaging film, hard packaging, elastic products and soft touch fixtures.
Currently, Dow has developed 12 brands and many customers are trying out. The company will focus on research and development of some of the brands accepted by the user manufacturers, including extrusion, casting and injection molding grade resin. After Dow's industrialization of the "first batch" of resins, the next step was to introduce more ethylene molecules into polypropylene copolymers and to study alternative ethylene comonomers.