Sintered Porous Plastics
Overview of Sintered Porous Plastics
Using a variety of thermoplastic media and other raw materials, Polystar Technologies creates precision-molded, sintered microporous solutions for all your applications, including: venting, filtration, fluid delivery, diffusion, and more.
Sintered Porous Plastics
Sintered porous plastics are molded, semi-rigid, open-cell, porous materials that are formed when heat fuses thermoplastic powders or granules together. The resulting part appears to be solid, but actually consists of tiny, interconnected pores. These pores or interstitial spaces make the material permeable to fluids. Permeability (a measure of how easily fluids can flow between the materials) and porosity (the space between the materials) can be adjusted as needed, and the resulting product can be used as a filtering, wicking, venting, or diffusing agent.
Chemically resistant porous plastic components with narrow pore size distributions can be used in a wide range of applications, including:
- Barrier vents and self-sealing filters for medical devices, lab instruments, microfluidic devices, sensors, and microelectronics
- Air, gas, dust and liquid filters for pumps, valves, etc.
- Hydrophilic media for fluid delivery or fluid collection
- Sample pads, absorption pads, and specimen collection nibs for diagnostics
- Wicks for fragrance delivery products, evaporation systems, etc.
- Filters for air, gas or liquid purification
- Sparges for semiconductor, bioprocessing, and other industrial processes
- Gas diffusers for laboratory, pharmaceutical, or food and beverage applications
Advantages of Sintered Porous Plastics
Porous plastics are lightweight, resilient, and rugged – which is ideal when structural integrity is required. The tortuous paths in the material produce high filtration efficiencies. Beyond these benefits, they typically offer:
- Cost-effecting Tooling
- Lower Production Costs
- Repeatable Performance with Controlled Porosity
- Sterilizability
- Chemically Resistance – to most acids, bases, and solvents
- Excellent Corrosion Resistance
- High Purity – with numerous FDA and USDA approved raw materials
- Suitability for automated assembly
- Customization – e.g., hydrophilic, hydrophobic, self-sealing, adsorbing properties
Our Research & Development
Polystar Technologies can partner with R&D teams to develop novel, porous plastic components that are:
- Self-Sealing
- Hydrophilic
- Hydrophobic
- Adsorptive
- Chemically Reactive
- Oleophobic
- Insulating for restricting ESD
- Conducting for enhancing ESD
- Desiccating to remove excess moisture
- Antimicrobial
- Ion Selective with specific ion exchangers
Partner with Polystar Technologies and we will assist you in creating precision components to meet your exacting performance requirements.
Contact us today to see how we might be able to partner together.