The rapidly growing number of electronics production facilities in Malaysia has led to a demand for high-grade conductive flooring that can avoid negative effects on productivity, improve product reliability and manufacturing profitability and ensure employee safety. The existing conductive additives for epoxy flooring are associated with a number of difficulties for flooring manufacturers, such as non-uniform conductivity, negative impact on colour, fluidity and density, degradation of surface smoothness, and changes in processing.
To meet the increasing standards for conductive floorings, Best Crete has been developing a brand new product based on the advanced conductive additive TUBALL™ single wall carbon nanotubes, which is produced by the leading global manufacturer OCSiAl. The key advantage of this new additive centres around the ultra-low loadings that are sufficient for achieving ESD and conductive ranges in flooring. Loadings that are a hundred times lower that those needed with the traditionally used additives allow manufacturers to expand the top layer colour range, achieve uniform conductivity of the flooring, and to maintain the compound texture, formulation and processing.
For conductive flooring, Best Crete uses TUBALL™ MATRIX 201, a super-concentrate based on single wall carbon nanotubes that was specially developed by OCSiAl for simplifying nanotube handling. A loading of 0.2% of this concentrate is sufficient to provide epoxy compounds with resistivity in the range 10 4 –10 5 Ω·cm.
Given the impressive results the company is achieving and the positive response from its customers, Best Crete is confident of the high potential of nanotube-reinforced conductive flooring on the Malaysian market. “While OCSiAl is already well known thanks to its network of business partners such as Union Chemicals, LANXESS and BÜFA Composite Systems in the European and Chinese markets, joint projects with Best Crete will strengthen OCSiAl’s presence in the Malaysian market. The collaboration opens up a wide range of opportunities for both partners to take conductive flooring to the next level,” said Eugene Tan, OCSiAl HK Business Manager.