Oxford Advanced Surfaces - Use of Onto™ Highly Reactive Chemistry to facilitate the manufacture of products containing engineered plastics and polymers

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Engineered plastics and polymers are becoming increasingly exploited in multiple markets foruse as product parts and are replacing traditional materials such as wood and metal becausethey combine many advantageous properties such as formability, strength and light weight.However, whilst having useful bulk properties, many of these materials have inherent surfaceproperties that lead to manufacturing and end use challenges, such as poor ability to adhere toother materials.Onto™ highly reactive chemistry provides a solution to these manufacturing problems byallowing surface modification of a wide range of materials in various forms, resulting in newfunctionality being imparted at the material surface. Whilst Onto™ is capable of reacting withmany types of materials, we believe that it has the greatest commercial potential for polymersfor which alternative technologies are less effective. We are choosing to concentrate on threekey applications of the technology, namely surface energy/wetting, adhesion promotion anddirect adhesion to a coating. All three contribute to solving surface interface problems forwhich we are aware that problems exist in the market, for example interlayer delamination inflexible electronic devices. However, the potential for these applications is vast becauseengineered polymers are utilised in so many products.A wide ranging market study must first be carried out to understand in which markets thesematerials are used, and to understand where their use is limited mainly by their surfaceproperties. From this broad overview, it will then be necessary to focus on specific markets indetail in order to identify the greatest opportunity for Onto™ to add value to products. Thetechnology could have a large impact socially and environmentally because it could facilitateproduct innovation and improve existing product performance in fields such as renewableenergy and medical applications.