The great potential of polycarbonate

A high-performance plastic from Bayer MaterialScience helps meet the demand for smartphones that produce high-quality photos. The company has developed a material solution that makes flash lenses more durable whilst improving picture quality. It is based on Apec?, a special polycarbonate that combines a range of properties such as light weight, high transparency and high heat resistance.

This combination increases the impact resistance of the LED lenses. Conventional materials are softer and therefore more easily damaged. The use of Apec? also results in clearer photos with truer colours. LED lenses are becoming increasingly important on the smartphone camera market.

“Our material is already used for lenses in car headlamps. Now we are turning to another application area,” said Wilfredo Aguilar, Technical Sales Manager at Bayer MaterialScience in Singapore. According to Aguilar, Apec? fully meets the requirements of the manufacturers. “By working in close collaboration with them, we ensure that new solutions precisely meet the needs of industry and customers.”

Apec? is the brand name for a special copolycarbonate that is a further development of polycarbonate, the high-performance plastic invented by Bayer in 1953. It is particularly well suited for applications requiring high heat resistance and therefore is used in the automotive, electronics and medical technology sectors, amongst others. In addition to high transparency and great impact strength, the material also offers good dimensional stability and weather resistance.

Furthermore, Apec? can be shaped and processed in a variety of ways. It can be also be utilised over a broad range of temperatures, from approximately -30oC to approximately +200oC. These properties, along with good dimensional stability, weatherability and flowability, allow Apec? to be utilised as a replacement for glass, metal or standard polycarbonate in high-heat applications. Thus, Apec? unique features facilitates a high level of design freedom and a broad processing range. The material is processed primarily via injection moulding and is available in clear, transparent, opaque and specialty coloured formats to further stretch design limits.

Apec? also enables versatility by offering several homogenized copolycarbonate grades, including those with ultraviolet stability and flame retardance. Flame-retardant grades are in compliance with UL 94’s V-0 rating at 1.5 mm thickness. In hospitals, on the road or in other high-heat applications, Apec? resin offers proven performance that can take the heat.

Outstanding properties for protection products

Aside from smartphone cameras, an Apec? grade has been used by KZPT for the vision of its fire helmets. The transparent and highly heat-resistant polycarbonate Apec? FR 1892 is a high-tech plastic that reliably protects firefighters’ faces and eyes against flames, heat and flying debris. KZPT uses the injection moulding process at its site in Kalisz, Poland, to produce visors used primarily by firefighters in eastern European countries and the Middle East.

With firefighters risking their lives every day to protect people, animals and property, it is therefore all the more important that they themselves are protected as well as possible against the hazards lurking at the site of a fire or accident. Helmets made of specially developed materials play an important role here.

“We investigated the suitability of a whole series of plastics for this application,” says Wlodzimierz Chlebowski, technical director at KZPT, “but only the product from Bayer MaterialScience offers the high level of fire protection and flAir Max 95 20th Anniversary