Teijin wins top ICIS Innovation Award

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Teijin Ltd’s mass production technologies for carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) recently received the Best Product Innovation award at this year’s ICIS Innovation Awards.

Teijin’s new technologies include intermediate materials made of thermoplastic resin instead of conventional thermosetting resin for molding CFRP, and methods for welding thermoplastic CFRP parts together and for bonding CFRP with other materials such as steel.

Increasingly, strict environmental standards and regulations in the automotive industry have intensified the need to reduce vehicle weights through the use of lightweight materials, such as CFRP, for components conventionally made from high-tension steel or aluminum. For the CFRP to be used in mass-produced vehicles, the manufacturing of CFRP must fit within a cycle time of less than a minute, and the cost, energy consumption as well as CO2 emissions associated with the whole process need to be reduced.

The Teijin Group, which has positioned automobiles and aircraft as one of its key growth markets, has been accelerating the development of new technology solutions through collaboration between the Teijin Composites Innovation Center and Toho Tenax Co. Ltd.

The ICIS award recognizes Teijin’s innovative technologies as a significant milestone and a big step towards the use of carbon fiber in the mass production of automobiles and other applications.