Descripción del proyecto
Technological developments are moving ever faster in our modern society, and so are the pressure put on industries to produce safe and sustainable products within a circular economy perspective. Hybrid assemblies, joints of dissimilar materials, are key in modern product design and found everywhere - in your smartphone, car, TV, dishwasher, in planes and so on. However, in modern products we increasingly rely on engineering plastics and fiber-reinforced plastic composites, which is intrinsically hard to bond to other types of material - and using industrial glue you cannot easily recycle the plastic part. This has become a major challenge that hampers development of better, more durable, longer living, and sustainable products in key manufacturing industries such as automotive, aerospace, medical device, electronics, renewables, offshore, consumer goods, etc. A prime example is the slow adoption of the most potent lightweight materials, high-performance plastics and plastic composites (70% weight reduction potential), in the transportation industry due to lack of acceptable joining methods – severely limiting the CO2 reduction potential of new cars and planes.
RadiSurf has developed the groundbreaking RadiBond technology, based on nanometer-thin coatings of polymer brushes, that provide sustainable, ultra-strong and ultra-tight hybrid joints that can easily be reversed at product end-of-life for disassembly and recycling of the bonded parts. RadiBond is a key enabling technology bringing outstanding bonding performance and easy integration into existing manufacturing assembly lines. As the pioneer in the industrial utilization of polymer brushes, Radisurf are now targeting full-scale market launch of RadiBond. However, to succeed in the transition from a small R&D provider to a manufacturing company, support from the EIC Accelerator Pilot program is crucial for demonstrating industrial implementation and scaling of the chemical production capacity.