Agustion Yogi Hendra, Chen Shia-Chung, Feng Ching-Te, Iskandar Bermawi Priyatna
Master Program in Industrial Engineering and Management, Faculty of Industrial Technology, Bandung Institute of Technology, Bandung 40132, Indonesia.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Chung Yuan Christian University, Taoyuan 32023, Taiwan.
Polymers (Basel). 2024 Sep 23;16(18):2674. doi: 10.3390/polym16182674.
Microcellular injection molding (MuCell) using supercritical fluid (SCF) as a foaming agent to achieve weight reduction has become popular in carbon emission reduction. In the typical MuCell® process, SCF N is commonly used. Although SCF CO exhibits high solubility and can achieve a high weight reduction, controlling the foaming is not easy, and its foaming cells are usually larger and less uniform, which limits its industrial application. Our previous studies have shown that gas counter pressure (GCP) can improve the foaming quality effectively. Here, we investigated whether or not the CO SCF foaming quality could be improved, and weight reduction was achieved for polycarbonate (PC) material. This is quite important for the electronics industry, in which most of the housing for devices is made of PC materials. MuCell was subjected to molding experiments using the parameters of the SCF dosage, melt temperature, mold temperature, and injection speed. The results revealed that using CO gas for the PC material can reduce the size of microcellular cells to 40 µm and increase the cell densities to 3.97 × 10 cells/cm. Using GCP significantly improved the microcellular injection-molded parts by reducing the cell size to 20.9 µm (a 45.41% improvement) and increasing the cell density to 8.04 × 10 cells/cm (a 102.48% improvement). However, implementing GCP may slightly decrease the target weight reduction. This study reveals that microcellular injection molding of PC parts using SCF CO can achieve high-quality foaming and reduce the weight by about 30%.
使用超临界流体（SCF）作为发泡剂以实现减重的微细胞注射成型（MuCell）在减少碳排放方面已变得很流行。在典型的MuCell®工艺中，常用SCF N。尽管SCF CO具有高溶解度且能实现高减重，但控制发泡并不容易，并且其发泡泡孔通常更大且更不均匀，这限制了其工业应用。我们之前的研究表明气体反压（GCP）能有效改善发泡质量。在此，我们研究了SCF CO的发泡质量是否能得到改善，并且实现了聚碳酸酯（PC）材料的减重。这对电子行业非常重要，因为该行业中大多数设备外壳是由PC材料制成的。对MuCell进行了使用SCF剂量、熔体温度、模具温度和注射速度等参数的成型实验。结果表明，对PC材料使用CO气体可将微细胞泡孔尺寸减小至40 µm，并将泡孔密度提高至3.97×10个泡孔/cm。使用GCP通过将泡孔尺寸减小至20.9 µm（提高了45.41%）以及将泡孔密度提高至8.04×10个泡孔/cm（提高了102.48%），显著改善了微细胞注射成型部件。然而，实施GCP可能会略微降低目标减重。本研究表明，使用SCF CO对PC部件进行微细胞注射成型可实现高质量发泡并减重约30%。
