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The Complex Science Behind Fire Retardants

One of the markets that Broadview has been in since our company began is in the making of fire retardants. Fire retardant chemicals are designed to slow down and reduce the intensity of the fire, and in some cases even stop it. Though there are other methods, we’re taking a closer look at fire retardants that use chemical action to reduce the flammability of whatever may be fueling the fire.

How Fire Retardants Work

There are several different types of chemical-based fire retardants, but our focus will be on char formation and intumescents, as these two types are what we specialize in. Our INTUMAX® products are designed to serve as intumescent agents that protect a variety of coatings.

Before we jump into intumescents though, it’s important to first understand how char layers work, a component of these fire retardant chemicals. For carbon-based substrates, char formation is an excellent option. When they experience intense heat and flame, the chemicals within the flame retardant react, forming a layer of carbon-filled char that is much harder to burn than the material underneath. This protects the substrate from burning any further.

Intumescents are based on char layers, but also incorporate other chemicals that, when the char layer reacts and forms due to intense heat, offer additional protection behind the char layer. They get their name from intumescence, the process of swelling in reaction to heat exposure–think of a marshmallow cooking over an open fire getting bigger as it roasts, but much less dense than it was at its initial state.

Broadview’s INTUMAX®

Our Intumax products are a family of fire retardant chemicals designed to form a thick, high-yield char barrier that mitigates fire and prevents further flame spread, all while insulating and protecting the coated substrate underneath from heat damage. They are entirely halogen free–and they will not result in highly toxic and corrosive gasses that are associated with many other flame retardant products. Additionally, they are made to have low solubility in water, so they won’t leech out over time and lose their performance. Intumax can be incorporated into a variety of materials and coatings, such as thermoset coatings and foams, potting compounds, thermoplastics, paints and resins, and much more.

Interested in Broadview’s fire retardant chemicals?

Broadview Technologies, Inc. has been providing innovative solutions in fire retardants, specialty anhydrides, plasticizers, and more since the 1960s. For more information about our products or anything that we can do for you, head over to our website to contact us!

Potting Compounds for Demanding Applications

Potting compounds are crucial for electronic assemblies, protecting each of the individual components from vibration, shock, extreme temperatures, moisture, dust, and other damaging conditions and contaminants. The more demanding the environment, the more important it is that potting compounds can withstand these harsh conditions.

One of Broadview’s specialties is in developing potting compound solutions for our customers that are capable of withstanding even the harshest conditions found in aerospace, defense, and other demanding applications where reliability is a must. We provide high performance potting compounds that insulate your electronics, protect them from extremely high or low temperatures, corrosion, moisture, and other hazards. Our goal is to ensure that your products maintain long-lasting performance, even in the harshest applications.

Broadview’s Potting Compound HIGHTEMP 221

HIGHTEMP 221 is the latest of our 200 series of single-component epoxy systems for potting applications. This clear impregnating and casting resin has all of the necessary components correctly integrated already so that our customers don’t need to worry about any additional hardeners or catalysts. All they have to do is melt and pour the resin, and then let it cure, with no risk of blending errors or damage to the components due to incorrect formulations.

This potting compound is a viscous blend at room temperature, and dissolves into a clear, fluid resin when heated, with an extended pot life and low viscosity compared to similar products. Our product is proven to withstand the internal stresses and strains caused by expansion during casting, and its performance won’t be affected by these conditions. HIGHTEMP 221 is also a polymerizable mixture, and any added plasticizers won’t flow out and cause the resin to lose its flexibility.

Broadview’s potting compound offers proven performance in the impregnation of government-standard electrical components, meeting the rigid standards of MIL-T-27 E, Class U for transformers and inductors. It’s been thoroughly tested for quality and performance in both the lab and the real world to ensure that it can meet the needs of any high reliability application across the most demanding industries.

Interested in HIGHTEMP 221 or any of our products? Head over to our website to learn more about Broadview Technologies and request a quote today.

Resoflex: Flexible and Flame Retardant Plasticizers

Broadview Technologies has been in the material sciences for decades, and over the years we’ve developed many different useful products for flame retardancy, epoxy curing, and plasticizing needs. One of the unique, high performance products that we offer is our Resoflex plasticizers.

The Importance of Plasticizers in Plastic Manufacturing

Plasticizers are crucial for injection molding and thermoforming of plastics, making these materials much easier to shape and mold. They are added to a polymer in order to cushion the chains and make the polymer less rigid, without actually affecting the polymer bonds themselves. This causes the thermoplastic to become much more flexible and far easier to work with when it comes to manufacturing certain plastic products. Broadview’s Resoflex products do just that–improve the flexibility of a polymer–but they also have the added benefit of improving the material’s flame retardance as well.

Broadview’s Resoflex Plasticizers

Resoflex R-296, R-560, and R-804 are high performance plasticizers developed by Broadview Technologies in collaboration with Cambridge Industries. These products soften a variety of thermoplastics, increasing their flexibility and plasticity for easier handling during manufacturing. The Resoflex line offers excellent chemical properties as they are completely saturated and thus are remarkably stable no matter the environment. Extreme temperatures on either end, UV rays, oxygen, ozone–none of these will affect the capability and performance of our plasticizers.

Our Resoflex products offer several enhanced properties and advantages, one of the main benefits being they are nonreactive and nonmigratory. The Resoflex line does not experience plasticizer migration, and thus won’t experience the problems associated with this issue, like environmental stress cracking or embrittlement. They offer essentially zero volatility–they won’t react due to hot or cold temperatures, and are stable when exposed to UV and water, and help the thermoplastic retain its color under various environmental conditions as well. Finally, Resoflex plasticizers offer excellent resistance to oils, fats, grease, and even gasoline, making them excellent for many different applications.

The Resoflex line offers some of the most versatile and high performance plasticizers in the industry, and have been used successfully in many different applications:

Adhesives
Polyester foam
Grease-Proof paper and fiberboard coatings for food packaging
Barrier coatings for vinyl-flooring and wall covering
Water-emulsion paints
Washable sizes for fabrics
Leather finishes
Warp sizes
Binders for fiberboard
High-grade heat-resistant lacquers
Coating fabrics having high moisture vapor transmission
Binders for non-woven fabric
Bookbinding adhesives
Self-sizing wall primers and sealers
Heat-seal coatings
Laminations
Coating nylon thread and filament
Synthetic Lubricants
Backing compounds for rugs and carpets

Interested in Broadview’s Plasticizers?

If you’re interested in Resoflex, or any of our products, head over to our website to contact us and request a quote today!

Polyanhydrides: Bio-based Alternatives for the Future

One of the most unique aspects about polyanhydrides compared to other types of specialty anhydrides is that they’re biodegradable. These types of polymers consist of anhydride bonds that break down in water, resulting in smaller chains that are much more easily degraded–and, especially important for pharmaceuticals, are also biocompatible. However, the safer nature of polyanhydride degradation also offers a bio-based alternative for many other applications too, especially in high performance electrical potting and encapsulation.

Broadview Technologies–A Premiere Manufacturer of Specialty Polyanhydrides for Electrical Potting and Epoxy Curing Agents

With the push for sustainability and more environmentally friendly practices across manufacturing, characteristics like the bio-friendly polyanhydride degradation are crucial for many applications.Broadview Technologies for instance has developed several polyanhydrides for use in epoxy curing for electrical components. Our product, Polyazelaic Polyanhydride (PAPA) for instance can be blended and cured with epoxy resins for electrical potting and encapsulation, and being a polyanhydride, offers a biobased alternative to other types of additives.

Or there’s our other polyanhydride products. PSPA, or polysebacic polyanhydride, for instance is an epoxy curing agent that doesn’t require the use of additional additives like other curing agents. Its properties meet even the strict requirements of NASA for heat shields, and lend well to a wide range of electrical potting applications. This polyanhydride offers a bio-based curing agent for epoxy resins used in potting, electrical encapsulation, electrostatic spray coatings, like powder coatings, and epoxy transfer molding compounds.

We also have a recent addition to our line of polyanhydride products, AC-986. This is a specifically bio-based polyanhydride, developed for formulating epoxy conformal coatings, and coatings with excellent moisture and acid resistance for resins that will experience highly corrosive environments.

About Broadview Technologies, Inc.

Broadview Technologies has a long history of developing a wide range of specialty anhydrides for various applications in epoxy curing, electrical potting, adhesives, and many different types of coatings, including our polyanhydride products. For more information on any of our products, don’t hesitate to check out our Product Directory for all technical information, or contact us today with any questions you may have.

Unlocking the Potential of Polyanhydrides for Food Packaging and Related Applications

In one of our previous articles, we explored the wide range of applications that polyanhydrides can serve thanks to their versatility. This time, we’re going to focus on the use of polyanhydrides for food packaging and pharmaceutical applications.

Polyanhydrides–Engineered for Biocompatibility and Safety

One of the major benefits of polyanhydrides is that they can be engineered specifically to meet certain purposes. For instance, Broadview has engineered a few different polyanhydrides for specific applications like epoxy systems, powder coating, and paper laminates. Other polyanhydrides are designed and formulated particularly for pharmaceutical applications that require biocompatibility. These polyanhydrides are made to be biobased and safe for use in drug delivery systems and other pharmaceutical applications that directly or indirectly impact a person’s health.

Polyanhydrides for Food Packaging

That same biobased properties and overall safety that can be engineered into polyanhydrides is what makes them excellent for packaging in food preparation and processing. Polymers have played an important role in packaging materials for most of the modern age, and polyanhydrides are one of those types of polymers that can play a role in food packaging.

Broadview’s polyanhydrides, while seeing their most common performance in electrical potting when blended with other liquid anhydrides, also prove successful in various packaging applications. Our PAPA (Polyazelaic Polyanhydride) for instance can be used in cured epoxy resins for one-package adhesives and prepreg tapes. Food packaging products need to remain stable and safe, without interfering with the contents itself. PAPA has both excellent toughness and good stability at room temperature, lasting anywhere from two months to over a year.

Broadview Technologies: Leading Manufacturer of Specialty Anhydrides and Polyanhydrides

Polyanhydrides have some of the most wide ranging applications of any type of anhydride, with applications across many different industries, including various types of packaging. Broadview Technologies, Inc. is a premiere developer and manufacturer of a wide range of specialty anhydrides, including polyanhydrides for food packaging applications. If you’re interested in our polyanhydrides, or any of our high performance products, head over to our website to check out our full product directory!

Exploring the Versatility and Benefits of Polyanhydrides

Polyanhydrides are one of the types of specialty anhydrides that we offer here at Broadview Technologies, and they’re one of the most versatile and advantageous products as well. Polyanhydrides of all types can be found serving a variety of applications. Broadview’s products are engineered to be epoxy curing agents and electrical potting compounds, but other polyanhydrides are best known for their use in biomedical treatments and pharmaceuticals.

What are Polyanhydrides?

Polyanhydrides are a type of polymer created by repeated units of anhydride bonds, creating a strong backbone chain. There are three major classes of polyanhydrides, depending on the chemical structure of the molecule, but nearly any type of polyanhydride can be engineered for specific properties and applications.

Polyanhydrides also have the added capability to be engineered for biocompatibility and controlled degradation, hence their popular use in pharmaceuticals and drug treatments. These types of polyanhydrides are considered biodegradable, as they degrade safely without damaging the human body when used in drug delivery systems.

Going Beyond the Medical Field

However, polyanhydrides aren’t just an excellent innovation for the medical field. Broadview Technologies for instance has developed two polyanhydrides that are excellent for potting compounds and epoxy resin curing applications.

Our PSPA (polysebacic polyanhydride) is a polymeric anhydride epoxy curing agent that doesn’t require the use of tertiary amines or other accelerators to work properly. It has been designed with characteristics such as excellent thermal stability, a long pot life, low vapor pressure, and high toughness, making it an ideal one-component epoxy system. PSPA is an excellent curing agent for potting compounds, electrical encapsulation, heat resistant ablative coatings, epoxy transfer molding compounds, and electrostatic spray coatings.

Our PAPA (polyazelaic polyanhydride) is a polyanhydride epoxy curing agent that offers a uniquely high toughness when blended into liquid anhydride curing agents. It also can be formulated to improve impact resistance and thermal cycling resistance, as well as a mixture that is stable at room temperature for over a year. It’s often used in applications like electrical potting and powder coating, adhesives, glass and paper laminates, prepreg tapes, filament wound composites, and various encapsulation compounds.

We also offer two different liquid versions – these are our AC-39 and our AC-986. These products are excellent ways of extending elongation and flexibility to epoxy formulations and elongations above 150% are achievable at room temperature.

Interested in Broadview’s products?

Broadview Technologies is a premiere manufacturer and supplier of a wide range of specialty anhydrides, fire retardants, and plasticizers. Head over to our website to learn more about all of our products and view our full product directory today!

The Building Blocks of Epoxy Resins

How Dianhydrides Improve Product Performance

Specialty anhydrides come in many different chemical makeups, with dianhydrides being one of the more unique. In their simplest form, dianhydrides are just any molecule that contains two anhydride groups, and they can be processed in a way that provides many different benefits to epoxy resins.

Dianhydrides–A critical component for coatings and resins

Dianhydrides serve a critical role as a thermal curative for epoxy resins, forming a highly crosslinked polymer network that imparts excellent protective properties for the resulting epoxy coating. They have a high thermal stability and reactivity, allowing coating manufacturers to enhance the durability and strength of their epoxy resins, especially those used in demanding applications like aerospace and industrial environments.

Dianhydrides at Broadview Technologies

Broadview Technologies is a leading manufacturer of specialty anhydrides, aromatic dianhydrides and dianhydride blends, including two dianhydride products–AC-32 and its derivative, AC-3205. The AC-32 specialty anhydride is a solid dianhydride that can be used as a curing agent for epoxy resins, particularly those found in electrical applications.

The aromatic dianhydride AC-32 is a critical component for manufacturing high performance epoxy curing agents. This product is an excellent choice for powder coatings, electrical castings, filament winding and pultrusion, transfer-molding compounds, and epoxy curing agents. Its unique polymeric structure offers higher aromatic content to epoxy cured systems, as well as superior heat resistance, higher Tg, and low moisture permeability.

When added to other types of coatings, the AC-32 can impart properties such as excellent wet strength retention and superior abrasion resistance.Our AC-32 dianhydrides also impart high toughness to the coatings made with them, improving vibration dampening and thermal shock resistance.

In addition to these properties, AC-32 and its derivatives blend very well with our liquid anhydrides, especially MTHPA, MHHPA, and METH-E, creating mixtures that remain liquid at room temperature.

Looking for an expert manufacturer and supplier of specialty anhydrides?

Broadview Technologies, Inc. is a leader in the material science industry and an expert manufacturer of specialty anhydrides and fire retardant products. Head over to our website to learn more about all of our products!

Fire Retardants for the Future: The Technology behind Broadview’s Intumax®

We’ve worked in multiple areas of material science over the years, and our research and careful development resulted in the production of Intumax®, a line of revolutionary flame retardant chemicals built for the demands of modern manufacturing. When blended into a resin system, Intumax reacts to heat or flame, foaming and forming a thick, high-yield char barrier which will mitigate fire and prevent further spread. It’s also designed to insulate and protect the coated substrate from any subsequent heat damage.

Environmentally Friendly

One of the most important aspects of Intumax is that the whole product line is halogen free, and will not evolve into the highly toxic gasses associated with traditional fire retardants. Intumax meets the safety requirements for fire safety in building construction, while also reducing the impact on human health and the environment. This chemical also has low water solubility, so it doesn’t have the tendency of traditional fire retardant chemicals to leach out over time.

A highly versatile product line

Broadview’s Intumax product line of intumescent agents can be incorporated into a wide variety of other products, such as thermoset coatings and foams, potting compounds and electrical laminates, fiberglass reinforced structures, thermoplastics, paints and films, and PVC resin systems. These curing agents blend unsaturated and saturated anhydride chemistry in order to balance reactivity and stability–reactivity with the products they’re added to, and stability for the final product.

Maximizing Curing Agent Performance

Intumax is the result of our expertise in specialty anhydrides and our long industry experience in optimizing epoxy formulations for industrial applications. These fire retardant chemicals deliver superior thermal resistance and provide our customers with the processing ease, uptime, and final product durability necessary for today’s manufacturing requirements. They have been proven successful in epoxy, acrylic, vinyl acetate, urethane, polypropylene, and PVC resin systems, even in very thin coatings.

Check out our full line of Intumax® products!

Broadview Technologies, Inc. has been a pioneer in the materials science industry since our inception. You can view our entire product directory on our website, and contact us to start your next order.

The Backbone of Modern Technology

The modern applications and uses of dianhydrides

Dianhydrides have been used extensively in electronics since the start of the industry in the sixties, and eventually were developed for use in coatings, adhesives, and composites. They play an important role in providing thermal stability and improving electronics performance, and provide the backbone modification for unsaturated polyester resins in order to develop more thermally resistant coatings.

The Applications of Dianhydrides

These types of specialty anhydrides typically fall into one of two categories–they’re used as an additive for a variety of powder coatings and adhesives, or as a way to develop polyimides for better flexibility, chemical resistance, and moisture absorption.

Building Blocks for Polyimide Resins

Dianhydrides are critical for the development of polyimide resins–high performance plastics that are used as a stable, lightweight replacement for materials such as glass, metals, and steel. The excellent thermal stability of these plastics is due to the use of dianhydrides in their making, and polyimides have become an excellent dielectric material for the electronics, aerospace, and automotive industries.

Epoxy Curing for Modern Electronics

Dianhydrides are also used extensively for curing epoxy resins and other coatings, especially those used in electronics. These anhydrides create a highly crosslinked polymer network that provides excellent protection for electronic components. Composites, fibers, films, foams, adhesives–all these and more benefit from the heat and electrical resistance that dianhydrides offer, even under aggressive conditions.

Broadview Technologies’ Specialty Dianhydrides

Broadview has developed two dianhydrides, AC-32 and its derivative AC-3205. This solid dianhydride is mainly used as an epoxy curing agent for electrical applications, and has been successfully applied to powder coatings, electrical castings, filament winding and pultrusion, and transfer-molding compounds as well.

In addition to enhancing a substrate’s thermal shock resistance, Broadview’s AC-32 also imparts high toughness, improving vibration dampening. It offers higher aromatic content to epoxy cured systems, superior heat resistance, higher Tg, and low-moisture permeability. Our dianhydride has been integrated into a wide variety of coatings, offering excellent strength, thermal stability, and abrasion resistance.

Looking for an expert in dianhydrides and other specialty anhydrides?

Broadview Technologies, Inc. is a leading manufacturer and supplier of many different specialty anhydrides, including saturated and unsaturated anhydrides, dianhydrides, and polyanhydrides. Check out our website for a full product directory, or contact us for more information about our products.

Choosing the Right Specialty Anhydride: MHHPA

Broadview’s blog series, ‘Choosing the Right Specialty Anhydride’ comes to a close in this last article highlighting the characteristics and applications of MHHPA. We know that there are a lot of different anhydrides available in the market, and choosing the right one for your particular application can seem like a daunting task. This series aims to assist our customers in choosing between the many different specialty anhydrides available, allowing them to determine which one will best fit their needs.

What is MHHPA?

Methylhexahydrophthalic Anhydride or MHHPA typically serves as a hardener for hot cured epoxy and other resins. This acid anhydride stands out in its performance, making it especially popular in electronics applications that require optimal performance. Chemically, its makeup is similar to that of HHPA, with the addition of the methyl group. This specialty anhydride features a cycloaliphatic structure and the absence of double bonds in the main structure, and does not contain any metals or contaminants. MHHPA also exhibits outstanding mechanical and electrical properties in addition to excellent color retention.

The applications of MHHPA

The main application of MHHPA is, as mentioned above, serving as a hardener for hot-cured epoxy resins, typically in the electric and electronics markets. This anhydride is also an excellent raw material for the development of polyurethane and polyester resins as well. Broadview supplies the highest purity and most color stable MHHPA available, developed by Polynt SpA.

Its unparalleled resistance to UV radiation and atmospheric agents, as well as its mechanical and electrical properties, make this anhydride an excellent choice for automotive clear coats and outdoor high voltage castings and composites. MHHPA is also especially suited for high performance electronics such as LEDs and automotive electronics.

About Broadview Technologies

Broadview Technologies, Inc. is a leading manufacturer and supplier of high performance specialty anhydrides, quality fire retardants, and specialty plasticizers. You can view our entire product directory on our website to see all of the different anhydrides that we offer, as well as our other products. For more information about what we can do for you, contact us today.