Materials Design: From Molecules to Sustainable, High-Performance Materials
The Additives and Polymer Design Department develops innovative solutions for circular, reliable, and functional plastics. Building on our established focus on plastics circularity, we enhance recycled materials through innovative additive and formulation concepts. This allows secondary materials—including those from short-lived packaging streams—to be upgraded for technically demanding applications and previously hard-to-use material streams to be converted into robust, application-ready materials. In addition, we are strengthening the use of bio-based feedstocks for additives, polymers, and materials, such as construction and insulation products or cushioning materials. We tailor biodegradability to the application, either delaying or accelerating it as required. We ensure durability, reliability, and safety through customized stabilization and flame-retardant concepts as well as by substituting critical ingredients. For elastomers, we develop new recycling strategies and specifically address additive selection and formulation development for long-lasting, reliable products. In this way, we provide solutions to substitute high-cost components, some of which have come under criticism. We endow plastics with new functionalities such as electrical and thermal conductivity or insulation, tailored diffusion and barrier properties, and integrated sensing capabilities. For our formulations, we use both commercially available components in new combinations and in-house developments, which we synthesize internally up to the kilogram scale. Looking ahead, we are advancing material-design-based concepts such as mono-material solutions and debondable connections to increase recyclability and resource efficiency. Digital methods and AI will accelerate our development—from formulation development to polymer-design approaches for microelectronics. In addition, we will apply probabilistic failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) to materials in the medium term to better understand the molecular-level causes of failure and to derive more robust, durable, and reliable product solutions.
Our key competencies
- Synthesis of novel additives and polymers from laboratory scale up to kilogram scale
- Mechanical recycling and formulation development of thermoplastics with tailor-made additive packages
- Development and application of halogen-free flame retardants, including testing in our in-house fire testing laboratory
- Substitution of critical substances such as PFAS, halogenated flame retardants, antimony, and other additives whose use is regulated or is expected to be regulated
- Formulation development of elastomers for sustainable and demanding applications
- Use of renewable raw materials across all areas of work
Integration into our R&D services and Research topics
We use sustainable, partly bio-based materials to promote the circularity of plastics. In doing so, we develop tailor-made additive systems that enable the use of recycled materials with equal or even higher quality performance.