A nucleating agent is indeed a niche product, simply an additive that modifies the resin, the raw material of plastics. But this additive is unique in that it works by “accelerating nucleation” and interfering with the crystallization process of the resin material.

NO.1 Nucleating agent is a plastic additive

Plastic is one of the greatest inventions of human society in the 20th century, and we can hardly live without it. The reason why plastics are so amazing is that, on the one hand, the raw materials of plastics – resins, such as PVC (polyvinyl chloride), PE (polyethylene), PP (polypropylene), have excellent properties of polymer materials, and on the other hand, a variety of plastic additives are added to the resin to make up or improve the performance of the resin. Frequently used plastic additives are plasticizers, lubricants, antioxidants, heat stabilizers, light stabilizers, flame retardants, antistatic agents, cross-linking agents, coupling agents, acid absorbers (such as water talc), and nucleating agents.

NO.2 Nucleating agents enhance the transparency, rigidity and toughness of plastics

What is the role of nucleating agent as a plastic additive?

Crystallization is the change of molecular arrangement from disorder to order within a substance. Crystallization behavior, crystallization form and spherical crystal size have a great influence on the performance of the substance.
Most resin materials are semi-crystalline polymers, that is, partially crystalline, partially non-crystalline, in use usually does not have sufficient rigidity, toughness, dimensional stability or transparency, etc..

Nucleating agents are divided into α crystalline nucleating agents and β crystalline nucleating agents, which can interfere with the crystallization process of resin materials. α crystalline nucleating agents can induce α crystalline nucleation and increase the crystallization temperature and crystallinity of resin materials, make the size of the crystals microfine, improve the transparency and surface gloss of plastics, improve the bending modulus, tensile strength, heat deflection temperature and creep resistance of plastics, etc.; β crystalline nucleating agents can induce β crystalline nucleation agent can induce β crystalline nucleation, improve the impact strength and heat deflection temperature.

N0.3 How do nucleating agents work?

Nucleating agents work by interfering with the crystallization process of resin materials.

Specifically, in the process of processing resin materials into pellets, there is a process from viscous flow state (molten state) to glass state (solid state), which will naturally crystallize without the addition of nucleating agents, but generally there will be insufficient crystallization and large crystalline size.

After adding nucleating agent, the crystallization temperature of nucleating agent will be higher than the natural crystallization temperature of resin material, so it realizes the nucleating agent as the nucleus to start the crystallization in advance, so that the crystallization is more adequate and the crystalline body size is finer, thus improving the performance of the final plastic products.