At the 2019 "Plastics in Automotive Engineering" (PIAE, www.vdi-wissensforum.de/piae) congress in Mannheim / Germany put on by German engineers' association VDI, Barlog Plastics (Overath / Germany; www.barlogplastics.de) showcased three families of high-performance compounds for electric cars and autonomous vehicles. The "Kebablend EC" compounds for electrically conductive components are suitable for applications such as the electromagnetic screening of sensors. "Kebablend M" and "Kebablend MW" for magnetically hard and soft components are used, for example, for contactless energy transmission. Finally, the "Kebablend TC" compounds – thermally conductive plastics for heat management – are used in the direct vicinity of high-power batteries and electric motors. All three compound families have been developed for injection moulding, making the installation of various functional inserts or films superfluous.

With Kebablend EC, it is possible to produce – by injection moulding and in a single shot – conductive housings that offer good electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) without weighty metal inserts. This is dependent on the frequency of the interfering radiation and also varies according to the polymer material and additives used. The compound was tested according to ASTM 4935 and enables a shielding attenuation of up to 40-70 dB, depending on the frequency.

Kebablend M and MW, on the other hand, are suitable for injection-moulded magnetically soft and hard components. The main field of application, especially for magnetically soft MW compounds, is most likely inductive charging. They were developed particularly for the injection moulding of magnetically optimised parts with a frequency-dependent relative permeability of up to 100. Among other things, they offer good magnetic field management, which is important for increasing the effectiveness of the charging process. Barlog cites increases here of up to 10%.

Kebablend TC is a family of thermally conductive compounds that can help to effectively dissipate the waste heat from batteries or electric power units in a small installation space. Customers can choose between polyamide, PBT, PPS and EBA as the base polymer, among others.