4. Conclusion

Today's major trends in the plastics industry – improved performance, use of products from renewable sources, lower costs – have given rise to new TPEs, super-TPEs and bio-TPEs, as well as new principles for thinking about the design chain.

Super-TPEs retain the fundamental advantages of TPEs and TPVs, enabling them to be manufactured on conventional thermoplastics equipment at much higher throughputs than those achieved with conventional vulcanized rubbers. What's more, they combine the advantages of high-performance vulcanized elastomers with those of engineering plastics. Generally designed to withstand prolonged exposure to heat and aggressive environments, they fall somewhere between engineering plastics and specialty rubbers. However, we must be aware that super-TPEs cannot replace all vulcanizable rubbers in all applications.

Bio-TPEs...