Polymer brushes - a sustainable bonding technology for dissimilar materials
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.