Mon Apr 09, 2007 8:07 am
NEC Corporation has developed a corn-based bioplastic that conducts heat faster than stainless steel, and it aims to mass-produce the material starting in April 2008 for use in mobile phones and other portable devices, the company said today.
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Photo: NEC Develops Heat-Conducting Bioplastic for Phones Photo 1 |
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NEC also said the material could help make laptops and mobile phones thinner and lighter by eliminating the need for heat-releasing sheets or fans. The bioplastic is expected to make electronic products more environmentally sound, while solving conventional heat release issues. The features of the new bioplastic include:
- Creation of a cross-linked structure of carbon fiber through use of a unique binder in the polylactic acid (PLA) resin achieves high heat diffusion (with carbon fiber of 10 percent and 30 percent the heat diffusion ability of the new bioplastic composite is comparable to and double that of stainless steel respectively). This enables good heat conductivity in the plane direction of the PLA resin board, which is a characteristic conventionally difficult to attain in metal boards.
- The composite is extremely environmentally friendly as it is mainly composed of biomass-based components including the binder (the biomass ratio exceeds 90 percent, excluding inorganic components such as the carbon fiber).
- The strength and moldability of the composite have been fundamentally verified for use in electronic products.
Recently, small-sized electronic products such as mobile phones and personal computers have suffered heat-release issues due to an increase in the amount of heat being generated from electronic parts. However, conventional heat-release devices such as fans and sheets are difficult to incorporate as products become smaller and slimmer.
In electronic product housings, the use of heat-conductive metals is considered to be one alternative to plastic for improving heat release, however, heat conductivities in the thickness direction of metal boards are too high and can cause partial or rapid increase in the temperatures of housings near electronic parts that have high temperatures, causing unnecessary anxiety to the user.
Attempts have been made to increase heat release from whole parts of housings by using heat-conductive plastics. However, previous heat-conductive plastics have had the disadvantages of low moldability, as well as high densities and costs, as they contain large amounts (more than 50 percent) of heat-conductive fillers such as fibers or particles made from carbon and metals. Therefore, a new kind of heat-conductive material has been long sought after to solve these issues.
The new bioplastic that achieves high heat conductivity has been enabled by new technology for carbon-fiber cross-linking with a unique biomass-based binder, which were both realized at NEC's fundamental and environmental research laboratories.
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