Plastics breakthrough could improve your car's mileage
A new thermal engineering process could finally make it viable to use plastic product components in things such as vehicles, LEDs and computers. Until now, the material has been overlooked for such applications because of its limitations in dissipating heat, but scientists from the University of Michigan have found a way to change plastic's molecular structure, making it as thermally conductive as glass. This advanced plastic could make products lighter, cheaper and more energy-efficient, and would be particularly useful in electric vehicle manufacturing since weight has a direct bearing on range. Previous attempts to improve plastic's conductive properties have seen it packed with metallic or ceramic fillers, which has been largely unsuccessful, not to mention expensive. This new approach uses a chemical process to expand and straighten plastic's tightly coiled molecular chains, giving heat energy a more direct route through the material. The plastic polymer is disso...