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About This Technology

Engineering polymers—thermoplastic resins that retain their mechanical properties at elevated temperatures—provide lightweight strength, stiffness, toughness, and corrosion resistance in a variety of demanding applications. EPs also offer design flexibility, allowing the fabrication of flat, gently curved, and deeply contoured parts or intricate thin-walled components. Manufacturers and processors can tailor these materials to specific applications by combining the base resins with reinforcements and additives or by blending them with other polymers. As result, EPs have become an integral part of design engineers' toolkits, replacing steel, aluminum, glass, ceramics, and other conventional materials in many applications.

At present, most of the standard accessories of modern life—automobiles, coffee makers, cell phones, PDAs, and laptop computers, to name a few—incorporate EPs. EPs find widespread use in cars and trucks, dominating applications such as headlight lenses and air-intake manifolds. Electrical and electronic devices also make extensive use of EPs in applications ranging from connectors, sockets, and switches to housings for computers, printers, telephones, and MP3 players. Appliances, optical media (compact discs and DVDs), and power tools are other important uses for EPs.

Demand for these versatile materials will continue to grow as a result of new application development, steady growth in existing end uses, and ongoing substitution for conventional materials. Tomorrow's cars, homes, and workplaces—like today's—will rely on EPs' lightweight strength, durability, and design flexibility.