CNF: Excellent Materials To Replace Carbon Fiber Materials

The new material CNF (Celluouse Nanofibers), which weighs only 20% of the iron, but has a strength of 5 times the strength of the iron alloy, is likely to break through the existing development bottleneck because the Japanese government intends to use the opportunity of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games to actively promote sales and is regarded as a good substitute for carbon fiber materials in the sporting goods market.

CNF belongs to nanometer.

(Nanocellulose) one of the materials, which is made up of many fibers or plastic materials, is broken evenly into nano particles. After mixing evenly, it not only takes into account the characteristics of low weight and high strength of specific fibers, but also has similar processability with plastics. It can be produced by plastic injection molding. It is not only easier to make more complex molding products than carbon fibers, nor does it require complex knitting procedures of carbon fibers, which is expected to lower manufacturing costs.

What is now actively promoting R & D is the AIST, which is a research and Development Institute of the Japanese Research Institute of the Ministry of economy and technology. Because the fiber used by CNF is from plant fiber, whether it is waste wood or rice straw husk, it can be recycled, which is conducive to the development of agriculture and forestry besides the manufacturing and material industries.

In terms of practical products, CNF is tough and lightweight. Long distance runners want to improve their performance.

The lighter the better, even if the weight reduction is only 1 grams, it is also valuable. Now the shoe sole made by the Institute of industrial research is 10% lighter and more wearable than the same sole, and has been supplied with relevant factories as the sole of the shoes for reliability testing.

Although carbon fiber soles also have a similar function, when carbon fibers are processed into shoes with other materials, they need complex engineering methods and new equipment. CNF can be used directly.

The injection molding machine is made; and CNF can also be used on plastic gloves or rubber tires, even cosmetics or paints can be applied, and the market scope is far from that of carbon fiber.

However, there are still some problems to overcome in the CNF material, because the difficulty of mixing the hydrophilic plant fiber and the non hydrophilic plastic material is not too small. The current practice needs a certain degree of heating, even though the fiber material is cheaper than plastic material, but the electricity consumption is quite high, so that CNF is still classified as high priced material.

The best way to solve the problem of production cost is to expand the market demand, and to reduce the cost by mass production. Therefore, the Institute of industrial technology aggregate has organized 176 nanofibers forums, which are composed of the companies of the two companies. With the aim of Tokyo Olympic sports equipment order, we hope that the manufacturers will invest in equipment and increase production capacity to measure the price so as to facilitate the listing of CNF materials.