Polyolefins are the most widely consumed plastic materials in the world. Their wide ranging versatility and cost competitiveness has lead to continued growth in recent times. Polypropylene has been modified through the use of nucleation for a number of years. Nucleation, of which clarification is considered a subset, has led to improvements in optical properties, physical properties, warpage control, and processing speed of polypropylene across many different processing techniques (injection molding, blow molding and extrusion). Nucleation of polyethylene has been studied over the years but there has never been commercial adoption of nucleation as a technique for modifying polyethylene properties. This is generally owing to insufficient performance enhancement achievable through nucleators typically designed for polypropylene. This paper presents a new chemistry that shows breakthrough performance in polyethylene nucleation and describes interesting property enhancements realized through its use.
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