Here is another article, just received from a fellow ITKG investor.
It comes from www.computerpoweruser.com.
Two articles in as many days! Hmmm! Are the drum beats getting louder?
Cheers
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X-Ray Vision: ElectriPlast
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Hard Hat Area
June 2007 • Vol.7 Issue 6
Page(s) 42-43 in print issue
X-Ray Vision: ElectriPlast
A New Twist On Plastic
Many products show promise, but they may never move beyond that stage. A great idea isn’t always enough; an inventor has to carry that idea through to the marketplace, convincing users and suppliers that the idea will work and, ultimately, be profitable.
Sometimes when that idea doesn’t grab the attention of the market in the first few years, perseverance becomes almost as important as the good idea. Integral Technologies (www.itkg.net) is hoping its perseverance pays off soon with its ElectriPlast technology. The company first developed ElectriPlast at the beginning of this decade but finally is just beginning to see the possibility of market successes.
What Is It?
ElectriPlast conducts heat and electricity like most metals; some call it a plastic-metal composite. ElectriPlast has hundreds of potential uses, including as an antenna that covers the entire body of a cell phone—like a “jacket” for the phone. Integral calls this jacket PlasTenna and says it will help improve cell phone signal strength and reliability.
Integral formulates ElectriPlast into pellets that contain varying conductive properties. A company selects the properties it wants, and then Integral can mold the pellets into any shape without losing the conductivity. Many ElectriPlast recipes can match the strength and durability of metals, says Integral, but the material weighs 40% less than aluminum and 80% less than copper.
ElectriPlast’s Development
About seven years ago, the idea for ElectriPlast was born while Integral was looking for a way to improve communications between the ground and satellites using a flat antenna design. William Robinson, CEO of Integral, says in developing the flat antenna Integral used galvanized metal, which worked well, but cutting the metal opened it to the possibility of rust. “We decided we should try to find another material that was like a metal but was plastic so that we could keep it sealed,” Robinson says. “There was nothing like that in the marketplace at the time.”
Current options for conductive polymers only work with low-voltage and low-current situations. Increasing the current in the polymer makes the compound brittle. Integral decided to look for other options and ended up developing ElectriPlast.
Most companies use a “salt and pepper” method to add micron-sized metal particles or metal powder particles to resin to create a conductive polymer. But this method can lead to spotty performance because there isn’t a pattern or formula for adding the particles. With ElectriPlast, however, Integral uses several patented methods to more carefully align the tiny metal particles in the resin.
Beyond a cell phone jacket-like antenna, ElectriPlast has many potential uses. A roof rack on a car could become a strong antenna, for example. With ElectriPlast, a heated plastic seat in a car could radiate the warmth throughout its surface, a plastic circuit board wouldn’t need solders or metal connectors, and the material could replace copper wiring in airplanes, making the planes lighter.
Going To Market
As Integral began marketing Electri-Plast several years ago, Robinson says the company made a serious mistake by trying to take the technology directly to end-user companies instead of dealing with the companies that supply those end users. That mistake greatly slowed the potential growth of ElectriPlast. “They want their suppliers to bring them the new invention or the new widget,” Robinson says. “They don’t want to deal with more companies. But now the supply chain is starting to phone us.”
Integral now is awarding licenses (for about $1 per license) to companies that want to use ElectriPlast technologies in their products. “We just want to sell this material on a per-pound basis or a per-kilogram basis,” Robinson says. “Then we’ll have the world figure out what to do with ElectriPlast.”
In the first half of 2007, a third-party facility was completing the chemical and electrical testing of ElectriPlast pellets. Robinson says he hopes Integral will see more patents approved by the end of 2007 and hopes to begin selling pellets by the end of the year. Although he says he’s not quite sure when customers will be able to purchase cell phones with Plas-Tenna, Robinson thinks the long wait for Integral to see its product in the marketplace is nearly over. “We’re talking with the top one or two manufacturers of cell phone bodies,” Robinson says. “They’re putting a lot of pressure on us to get the testing done. The design cycles are 12 to 18 months out, so I’d be thrilled if we made enough impact to see phones [with PlasTenna] in late 2008.”
by Kyle Schurman
How ElectriPlast Works
To create ElectriPlast, Integral starts with micron-sized pieces of metal. Those pieces are mixed with a plastic resin in a unique way to create ElectriPlast. Robinson says Integral’s method of mixing the items allow the tiny metal particles to align themselves, creating a chain that resembles steel wool.
Inside a conductive material, electrons will naturally travel from point to point, using the path of least resistance. The metal in the ElectriPlast compound is a far better conductor of electricity than a carbon-based compound. Because carbon particles are spherical, they don’t have as many contact points with each other as the rectangular-shaped metal pieces have.
Integral can adjust the number of particles in the pellets to change the conductivity properties of a particular batch of ElectriPlast to meet the needs of each individual company. Some companies want an antenna-like product, some want an RF shield, and others want to mimic metal. By increasing the number of particles (increasing the conductive doping concentration), more particles touch, and electrons move more quickly and freely. Reducing the conductive doping concentration slows the flow of the electrons and increases resistance.
Using this method, Integral can create several ElectriPlast formulas. For example, one formula could carry the conductive capabilities of a metal, such as copper, but retain the flexibility and structural characteristics of a plastic. Integral selects from thousands of commercially available resins—ranging from rubber to plastic—to create ElectriPlast. A company can tell Integral what type of material it wants to use or simulate, and Integral can construct an ElectriPlast formula to match those specifications.
Integral creates pellets from the resin. All of the pellets are similar sizes regardless of the ElectriPlast formula they contain. Each pellet measures about 3/16 of an inch in diameter and about 1/5 of an inch in length. Integral molds the ElectriPlast material into a rope-or cord-like shape and then cuts it to form the pellets.
Source: Integral Technologies
Cell Phones Lose Antennas, Get “Jackets”
William Robinson says using ElectriPlast to create a “jacket” for a cell phone that serves as the phone’s antenna was one of the company’s first ideas for the technology.
With a traditional cell phone antenna, the angle of the signal is important because with a small antenna a signal could hit it and bounce off. But using ElectriPlast as an antenna, called a PlasTenna, that covers the entire phone gives it a greater chance of absorbing the signal and provides more signal strength when sending data. Robinson says Integral has created a working PlasTenna that’s only 1/10,000 of an inch in thickness.
Cell phone antennas don’t occupy a large area; however, in a device as small as a cell phone, free space is at a premium, and removing the traditional antenna would give designers more options. “The antenna is the last thing they think about,” Robinson says of cell phone designers. “An ElectriPlast antenna gives designers more real estate. There’s more room on the inside if the antenna is moved to the outside. Plus it’s exposed to the outside, not under the phone’s shell.”
Robinson says Integral’s designers were surprised how easy it was to make an ElectriPlast antenna work with an existing cell phone. The designers simply removed a flat panel on the phone and replaced it a flat piece of ElectriPlast.
Integral has developed PlasTenna units with several frequencies, including 2.4GHz, 1.9GHz, 1.56GHz, 850MHz, 400MHz, 148MHz, and 137MHz.
Sources: Integral Technologies, HowStuffWorks.com
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