Properties and applications of liquid crystalline polymers and high performance blends

Combining liquid crystalline polymers (LCP) with other materials to improve overall property balance, exploit unique LCP performance, mitigate property deficiencies and/or lower cost is an active and fruitful area of applied LCP research. The intimate mixing of two or more polymers to form a new material with a unique property set has emerged as a desirable route to new product development. The resulting blend or alloy, if comprised of commercially available polymers, greatly reduces the time and costs associated with new materials development while offering the possibility of a low cost product with tailored properties and/or improved processibility. With conventional polymers, LCP can function as a high modulus fibrous reinforcement; and with other LCP or at relatively low levels of conventional polymer addition the objective is to mitigate LCP problems such as poor weld-line strength or high property anisotropy.