High Barrier Packaging with Liquid Crystal Polymers, 1996 Polymers, Laminations & Coatings Conference Proceedings

Because of their extremely high barrier properties, chemical inertness, and high temperature capability, liquid crystal polymers (LCPs) will play an increasingly important role in packaging. Many packaging professional; are not familiar with LCPs because to date their use has been exclusively in injection molded parts such as electronic connectors. The key to using LCP in packaging is processing which uses the high performance polymer efficiently. Multiaxially oriented LCP films and coextruded LCP multilayers are being developed to meet the requirements of high performance and low cost packaging. Although the price of LCPs is relatively high, they can be used with favorable cost-performance tradeoffs because thin layers of LCP can replace much thicker layers of alternative barrier polymers. This paper describes what LCPs are, how they are processed, what type of extrusion machinery is being used, and where they are finding applications in packaging with performance and cost advantages.