Dr. Stefanio Musolino receives the award in New Orleans
VICTORIA – Start-up company XlynX Materials was announced as winner of the 2023 Innovation Award at the Adhesion and Sealants Council Convention and Exposition in New Orleans, Louisiana in April.
Xlynx Materials is a specialty chemical and materials company and the firm’s senior research scientist, Dr. Stefania Musolino, stated “As a small-start-up company from Victoria, for us to be recognized alongside these established leaders is quite amazing.”
XlynX received the award for its submission on the “Development of Universal Covalent Adhesives for Use with Low Surface Energy Polymers”, which describes how the company took inspiration from the field of chemical biology to solve long-standing materials science challenges.
The ASC Innovation Awards are designed to foster and encourage innovation by recognizing significant impact chemistries that contribute to advancements in technology and address unmet needs in the adhesives and sealants industry.
Past winners have included industry giants like DuPont, , H.B. FulleDowr, PPG, Henkel and Avery Dennison.
“I’m thrilled that we’ve been recognized for innovation, as this is something we pride ourselves on,” says lead inventor and scientific advisor Dr. Jeremy Wulff. “We were first to develop a crosslinking molecular adhesive for this kind of use with commodity polymers, and we aim to remain a leader in this innovative field of diazirine chemistry.”
The new compounds, known as BondLynx and PlastiLynx, are easy to apply and are activated by either moderate heat or UV/Vis light. They are primarily designed as adhesives, primers, and textile strengtheners, and the results in these areas have been remarkable.
In lap shear tests, the strength of bonds between LSE polymers—glued together with traditional, store-bought adhesives—have been increased by as much as 950% when primed with XlynX’s compounds first.
Low Surface Energy (LSE) polymers such as polyethylene and polypropylene are useful materials that are increasingly found in technological innovation for ropes and mechanical parts to performance textiles and medical devices. LSE polymers are relatively cheap to produce, can be molded to specific dimensions, and offer remarkable strength, durability, and resistance for such lightweight materials.
However, these same qualities result in LSE polymers being extremely resistant to adhesion (gluing), layering, coating, and dyeing applications, which limits how these materials are used.
In response to this challenge, XlynX Materials has developed a highly reactive suite of compounds that chemically insert themselves into unreactive polymer surfaces.
In this way, they transform LSE polymers into materials that are no longer resistant to gluing, coating or other adhesion-based applications. This breakthrough “diazirine” technology is enabling polymers to be used in a host of new applications.
Business Examiner Staff
