Performance Polymers
The Ultrason® E, S and P resins are amorphous thermoplastics derived from polyethersulfone (PESU), polysulfone (PSU) and polyphenylsulfone (PPSU). Their unique property profile allows them to be manufactured into high-quality parts for household and catering, membrane filtration, automotive and sanitary/water as well as for E&E, medical technology and the production of hydrogen. They can be processed by almost all techniques suitable for thermoplastics.
Find the suitable Ultrason® grade for your high-performance application in many industries: material properties, property values, processing methods and more!
The Ultrason® team is operating globally, ensuring excellent technical services and high material quality in every region. Ultrason® is available in a wide range of grades, compounds and colors. Because of its extraordinary versatility, it can substitute thermosets, metals and ceramics in a lot of industries:
For clean water and safe food - Ultrason® enhances high-flux filtration membranes in water purification, food processing, wastewater treatment and gas separation. High-purity Ultrason® is processed into hollow fiber membranes for water treatment, nano-filtration (NF) membranes to filter beverages, durable reverse osmosis (RO) membranes for seawater desalination as well as into ultrafiltration (UF) membranes for point-of-use filters in taps and faucets. Over a wide pH-range, it is soluble in common membrane solvents and effectively filters fungi, bacteria, viruses due to excellent pore size control with a narrow pore size distribution. Thus Ultrason® contributes to high drinking water and food quality, increasing public health.
Household and catering
Ultrason® is the ideal material for stylish, durable and safe applications in the household, catering and food packaging sectors. The transparent, high-temperature resistant Ultrason® grades keep their excellent mechanical properties and dimensional stability over a wide temperature range. Ultrason® offers great design freedom, can easily be colored and substitutes glass, metal, ceramic and porcelain. It also contributes to a sustainable lifestyle and circular economy: plates, trays, mugs, bottles and many more household and catering articles made of Ultrason® can be reused many times without loss in mechanical properties and design – the best choice for many to-go applications and multi-cycle food packaging systems!
Electrics and electronics (E&E)
When E&E gets tough, Ultrason® gets going! Ultrason® is the perfect choice for high-performance E&E parts with a special property profile. Designed for advanced miniaturization, energy efficiency, and outstanding durability, Ultrason® enables smarter, lighter, and more reliable components – with versatile colorability. By its excellent thermal management, inherent flame retardancy, and superior chemical resistance, Ultrason® opens up new possibilities for demanding applications in data/energy transmission and consumer electronics, e.g., optical transceivers, circuit breakers, capacitors, semi-conductors, optical fiber connectors as well as test and burn-in sockets.
Automotive
Because of its high temperature and chemical resistance, Ultrason® is indispensable for many challenging automotive parts - in combustion and electric engines. The water, electrical and oil circuits benefit from Ultrason®’s excellent dimensional stability and resistance against hydrolysis, motor oils and thermal effects. This applies to oil pumps, oil control pistons, water pump impellers, fuse covers and E&E connectors. In headlights, foglights, and reflectors, Ultrason® is suited for bezels and housings with high surface quality and easy metallization. Efficient e-engines reliably work at high voltages and aggressive coolant media as Ultrason® can be used for stators/rotors and as hollow/flat membranes in humidifiers.
Sanitary and water
Ultrason® enables durable parts for the sanitary and water industry with exceptional use properties over a long lifetime: It shows excellent hydrolysis resistance, outstanding mechanical properties at cold and hot temperatures, high thermal, chemical and corrosion resistance as well as very good toughness and stiffness, making Ultrason® the perfect metal replacement for pipe fittings, pump impellers, valves, water cartridges and flow meter parts. It is approved for drinking water contact, e.g., ISO 9080. Thus consumers can enjoy clean water without heavy metal contamination and smoothly working pumps with increased energy efficiency – thanks to versatile Ultrason® for lightweight parts with tailored functionality.
Green hydrogen production
Highly efficient electrolyzers are key in advancing the green hydrogen economy. For the development of larger, more efficient and durable electrolyzers, BASF offers a tailored Ultrason® portfolio for components in water electrolyzers (AWE, PEM, AEM) used for green hydrogen – combined with application know-how and reliable local technical support for part design. Backed by BASF’s deep understanding of complex injection-molding applications and membrane casting, BASF supports customers in upscaling electrolyzer technology, pushing the transformation to clean energy! BASF’s portfolio for electrolyzer parts includes Ultrason® grades ideal for frames, sub-gaskets and separator membranes.
Ultrason® can also be used to design colorful components: Avient and BASF are collaborating to offer colored grades of Ultrason® high-performance polymers to the global market. The colored grades feature BASF’s Ultrason® polyarylethersulfones as high-quality base polymer combined with Avient’s Colorant Chromatics™ high-temperature color formulation expertise for color concentrates and pre-colored solutions.
The collaboration will give customers in industries such as household and catering, E&E, and healthcare a distinctive benefit by providing comprehensive technical support from the base polymer to the final-colored product. As a result, customers will be able to
react more quickly to design trends
meet technical requirements as well as color standards
thereby increase speed to market.
BASF offers a broad Ultrason® material portfolio (PSU, PESU, PPSU) suiting your needs so that you can also develop innovative grades for demanding applications. The most important grades of Ultrason® E, S and P are:
Ultrason® can be processed by all known techniques for thermoplastics, the most important of which are injection molding and extrusion. BASF offers on-site technical application support in all regions, the different grades are globally available.
chemicals
animal and vegetable fats
detergents
care products
water
foods
solvents
BASF has conducted extensive tests to support you in finding the right Ultrason® PSU, PESU or PPSU grade for your application. The brochure serves as a basic guide as the behavior of components when in contact with chemicals depends on their design, processing, and potential mechanical loads (internal and external). The polymer’s molecular weight also plays an important role. In many cases, statements on the suitability of a selected material can only be made after practical testing with actual moldings.
Explore all the facts and figures in our brochure
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