While electric vehicles reduce engine noise, the demand for suppressing low-frequency road noise is expected to grow, alongside tighter exterior noise regulations. Standard thermoplastic resins have limited vibration damping capabilities, so rubber-based materials like butyl rubber are commonly used for noise suppression. However, these materials lack thermoplasticity, making them unsuitable for secondary processing, such as forming complex shapes and parts. Additionally, their inability to maintain hardness and rigidity at temperatures up to 120°C limits their use in automotive, electrical, electronic, and other applications.
This challenge prompted Toray to explore polymer alloys that combine nylon, known for its exceptional high-temperature rigidity and moldability, with resins offering excellent vibration damping. Conventional alloy technologies produce micrometer-scale dispersion structures, which limit the ability to fully express these properties. By leveraging its proprietary NANOALLOY technology (see Note 1), Toray achieved a co-continuous structure in which each resin phase forms a continuous network (Note 2) at scales of 100 to 300 nanometers (see Figure 1). This breakthrough resulted in a nylon resin with superior vibration damping, moldability, and high-temperature rigidity.
Toray Industries has developed a damping nylon resin with four times the damping performance of butyl rubber, maintaining high-temperature rigidity and moldability.
Using NANOALLOY technology, it offers superior vibration damping and thermoplasticity, enabling diverse applications in electric vehicles, electronics, and construction, with plans for commercialisation by March 2027.
Using its advanced technology, Toray demonstrated that the loss tangent, a key indicator of damping performance (Note 3), is around 28 times higher than that of standard nylon resin and four times higher than that of butyl rubber. The thermoplasticity of the new material makes it suitable for reinforced products incorporating glass fibers and other additives. Also, the material exhibits 80 times greater high-temperature rigidity than butyl rubber while maintaining outstanding vibration damping properties.
As well as replacing flexible butyl rubber-based damping materials used in gaskets and seals, the new material’s rigidity opens up opportunities for noise suppression applications in covers and larger structural components, such as chassis housings.
The new ultra-damping nylon resin should find applications in mobility components, electrical and electronic parts, industrial equipment, and construction materials. Toray will continue to refine mass production technologies to support its deployment across these industries.
Toray will fully leverage its core capabilities in synthetic organic chemistry, polymer chemistry, biotechnology, and nanotechnology to materialize its corporate philosophy of “contributing to society through the creation of new value with innovative ideas, technologies and products.”
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Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RM)