Plastic Microcapillary Films

Plastic Microcapillary Films (MCF) were invented in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Cambridge in the mid 2000s. The background to the invention was work carried out by Dr Tri Tuladhar on the foaming of polymers where it was realised that putting voidage into polymers by foaming involved a difficult to control nucleation process. Additional work carried out by Dr Liang in the Polymer Fluid Groups involved injecting gas into polymer extrusions. So Bart Hallmark was set the task to “engineer voidage” into polymers using gas injection needles. His first two years of the PhD were a nightmare; however the eureka moment happened in the third year and he was able to successfully extrude MCFs.

MCF material can now be purchased from www.lamina.uk.com

The first set of publications are given below, followed by a powerpoint presentation given to in Korea in 2012. MCF technology can now be found in a number of end user devices and application areas.

MCF Korea 2012 (v3) (.pdf)

Publications relevant to MCFs are given below