Abstract
There has been rapid progress in the industrial application of high-molecular-weight materials. Plastics, in particular, are in wide demand owing to their low prices and high performance. With the likely exhaustion of their petroleum raw materials, more effective ways of utilizing plastics are being sought. The microcellular foaming (MF) process has proved a growth industry. It enables a considerable reduction in the amount of plastic used, while preserving its desirable mechanical properties. A major advantage of the MF process is in the production of lightweight products. This study examined the optical properties of MF plastics that become white on foaming. This alters the optical properties of the parent plastic, such as from semitransparency to opacity, with a direct reduction in light transmission. A series of experiments that show the quantitative changes in light transmission that occur on microcell generation in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polycarbonate (PC) are reported.
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