Development of CO2 for polymer foam applications

Abstract Polymer foams created using supercritical carbon dioxide as a processing solvent have garnered much interest in recent years. The properties of supercritical CO 2 make it ideally suited to replace organic solvents such as chlorofluorocarbons that are being phased out for environmental reasons. A number of processes and products are already being used in industry, and we provide several examples of these developments. Yet, despite all that is now known about polymer/CO 2 systems, a complete understanding of the foaming process, particularly nucleation, is lacking. In this article, we give an overview of the state of the art in polymer foaming with CO 2 and highlight the challenges that remain to be overcome.

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