Toray’s development work focuses on honeycomb cores and sandwich panels using Toray’s NANOALLOY® technology, which that combines multiple polymers on a nano-metre scale (one billionth of a metre) to enable high performance and functionality in polymers.
EconCore’s ThermHex technology enables the production of thermoplastic honeycomb core materials and sandwich panels in a fast, continuous process.
Itochu Corporation, Japan, is EconCore’s partner for licensing of ThermHex technology in the Asia-Pacific region.
Applications for NANOALLOY based honeycomb could include crash sensitive automotive parts where control of high impact energy is required.
“Polyamide based on NANOALLOY technologies not only has very excellent impact absorbing performance but also makes the polyamide honeycomb process easier," says Hiroo Karasawa, General Manager of the Plastics Technical Dept. of Toray .
"Toray has already filed very strong patents for NANOALLOY material and honeycomb structure.”