Basics of plastics
Plastic (organic polymer) is defined as a material whose basic constituent is manufactured synthetically or semi-synthetically from monomer, largely organic molecules (such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen or nitrogen). However, plastics can also contain inorganic constituents such chlorine, fluorine or sulphur.
Plastics can comprise both linear chains and also branched and crosslinked chains. The chain length of the individual polymer molecules varies between a few thousand molecular units to over a million monomer organic molecular units. The chain length and the branches define not only the composition but also the main characteristics of the individual materials.
One of the outstanding characteristics of plastics is that their technical properties (such as hardness, elasticity, breaking strength, temperature resistance, thermal dimensional stability, chemical resistance etc.) can be varied within wide limits by the selection of raw materials, the manufacturing process and modification using additives.
Plastics are usually created by a chain reaction such as polymerization, polyaddition or polycondensation from monomers in so-called reactors. The raw material used here is generally cracked naphtha produced by the distillation of crude oil and natural gas.
Plastics are divided into three main groups in analogy with their molecular structure depending on the degree of crosslinking between the main macromolecular chains. As well as the group of thermoplastic polymers offered by Ensinger, other groups are known as elastomers and thermoset plastics.
As indicated above, Ensinger works with the thermoplastic material group, as this can be repeatedly reshaped and processed and also demonstrates a high level of modification potential. The thermoplastic polymer group is divided further into two groups with different structures. A distinction is drawn between amorphous and semi-crystalline thermoplastic polymers.
On principle, the thermoplastic polymer group is subdivided into three sections based on their thermal stability.
