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Material Science At Boyd

We develop lighter, smaller, more functional components for our customers starting with our foundational Material Science expertise and engineering. Material innovation enables us to extend peak performance without adding weight or bulk using science to find unique ways to get more performance with less material.

We’ve innovated Material Science since our founding in 1928, evolving from industrial fabrics and polymers in our early years to cutting-edge optical films today.

We drive innovation both in Boyd’s Material Science portfolio and jointly with our strategic global material supply partners.

We listen to our customers’ most complex challenges and creatively embrace science to solve their ambitious performance targets leveraging material characteristics.

Boyd’s in-depth knowledge of material properties, compatibility, and behavior across a wide range of material types assure customers specify those materials best optimized for desired performance, sustainability goals, regional availability, full product lifecycle management, and overall best total cost of ownership.

Boyd’s Material Science Expertise enables our Customers to:

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Innovate with the most advanced materials available

Boyd’s Material Science heritage combined with our global material supplier partnerships assure you fully leverage the latest material innovation in your project. Advanced materials help you push the boundaries of existing designs or redefine your market.

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Design with confidence

Develop products with confidence knowing Boyd recommends the best fit materials for your application and project requirements. We mix and match compatible materials to design and fabricate multi-functional assemblies, packing more features into smaller spaces.

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Differentiate your product

Boyd’s Material Science expertise helps you implement materials that can improve your product’s lifespan, performance, functionality, and sustainability, putting your brand above the competition.

What is Material Science?

Material science is the research and study of the structures and chemical properties of natural, synthetic, or composite materials including metals and metal alloys, polymers such as rubber and plastic, ceramics, and others. Material scientists and engineers leverage this knowledge to improve existing materials or create new materials with different characteristics for new applications. Those versed in material science are also adept at recommending which materials work best in certain applications or products.

What is Boyd’s material science expertise?

Boyd’s material scientists leverage their knowledge and devise ways to improve existing materials, creatively combine materials, or develop new formulations with specific characteristics for use in different applications and products. Armed with decades of experience and access to the latest material innovation, our material science experts recommend best fit materials for your application and have been doing so since 1928.

Why trust Boyd as your Material Science Partner?

Boyd combines in-house material expertise backed by nearly 100 years, innovative and cost-effective processing methods, and excellent supplier relationships to help you find the best material for your application. We help you optimize your design while handling and converting diverse materials that integrate to create an effective multi-functional component that creatively gives the best of performance, assembly simplicity, and total overall cost.

Featured Material: Silicone

Applications demanding high levels of quality and safety utilize silicone, a high quality, sustainable rubber. For over 40 years, Boyd has been compounding silicone and manufacturing components like silicone tubes and extruded profiles, o-rings, and complex silicone molded parts and assemblies for industries including medical, pharmaceutical, transportation, and eMobility.



Films

Films or sheet materials encompass a wide range of chemical compositions, including plastics, rubber, and metals. Newer recyclable and bio-decomposable films are also becoming more available and widespread. Films commonly come in roll format allowing precision converters, like Boyd to use continual manufacturing processes like advanced rotary die cutting for high volume production. Printed films are used for labeling. Films combined with low tack adhesive are used for surface protection. Boyd also utilizes high performance optical designs to fabricate advanced display light guides.

Film materials can be precision converted in a variety of methods best suited for your application and project requirements, including rapid prototyping for quick design evaluations. Boyd’s precision converting expertise paired with our material science heritage enable us to help you make the most of film materials with high production yield rates, optimized material utilization, and complex single pass rotary converting to ensure precise film layer alignment.

Adhesives

Adhesives are materials used to join surfaces together. These bonds may be permanent or temporary, depending upon the application. Adhesives are derived from different chemistries such as acrylic, silicone, rubber, urethane, and epoxy. New biobased and bio-decomposable materials are also developing rapidly for more sustainable adhesive products.

Boyd’s adhesive expertise is wide and deep, spanning 70+ years. Our experience guiding adhesive tape formulations enables us to laminate materials together to create complex, multifunctional assemblies that offer the performance characteristics of a variety of materials. Tapes can be supported by a film material as either single sided or double-sided tape, or come with no carrier material, called transfer tapes. Adhesives can also be integrated into foam materials or take the form of mechanical fasteners like hook and loop fabrics, which also join surfaces together.

Rubber

Rubber is a rugged elastic polymer derived from both natural and synthetic sources. Its versatility enables rubber products to serve as durable seals and environmental protection in demanding transportation applications or as stable, biocompatible medical products.

Foams

Foam and sponge rubber are resilient, lightweight materials and possible applications are insulation, shock and impact absorption, vibration damping, and sealing. Boyd’s foam expertise includes selection, application, and precision converting, as well as formulating our own SOLIMIDE® Foams.

Plastics

Plastics are adaptable, lightweight, durable, flexible, and relatively inexpensive materials, which has led to widespread use across most industries. They can be heated and cooled through numerous cycles, making them recyclable. Plastics come in a wide variety of chemical compositions and resulting behaviors. Boyd applies plastic material science knowledge learned over 30+ years to guide plastic innovation.

From thermoplastics to thermosetting polymers, crystalline or semi-crystalline to amorphous plastics, and biodegradable plastics and bioplastics, Boyd employs our knowledge and ability to compound, mold, and extrude plastics. We help customers decrease product weight, increase resilience and durability, and improve the consumer experience using our plastic material science innovation.

Fabrics

Woven fabrics, created by interlacing fibers or yarns, and knit fabrics, made by pulling loops of thread or yarn through each other, generate breathable and conformable sheets commonly used in medical applications such as wound therapy.

Fibrous webs that are bonded together form nonwoven sheet materials that are viable for a wide variety of insulation, absorption, and filtration applications. Pressed sheet felts are common in automotive, industrial, and aerospace applications for reducing friction and absorbing noise

Boyd’s expertise in combining fabrics with films and adhesives have made us a key partner in creating advanced wound care products in our clean room environments and construct comprehensive NVH and BSR reducing solutions for the most demanding applications.

Fluids

Fluids are an essential aspect to some of Boyd’s highest performance thermal management solutions. Liquid Cooling Systems or Two-Phase heat transfer components like heat pipes, vapor chambers, and thermosiphons cannot function without high quality liquids. Liquid’s high heat capacity makes it ideal to quickly absorb and transport heat efficiently.

Boyd’s material science expertise enables us to define the right fluid for each application. We ensure compatibility across components in a liquid cooled system and operating temperatures are met in two phase solutions. Our Liquid Cooling System and two phase engineering heritage spans over half a century in some of the most demanding applications with fluids lasting upwards of 20 years.

Graphite

Graphite is a highly effective thermal material with its high planar thermal conductivity and low mass. It is capable of horizontally conducting high thermal loads quickly and efficiently. Graphite is naturally brittle and flakey, making processing, handling, and assembly difficult.

Boyd leverages both natural and synthetic graphite in a wide range of solutions with proprietary fabrication and design expertise that enables us to efficiently manufacture graphite components optimized for clean and easy assembly. This helps customers leverage graphite benefits while minimizing any inherent material difficulties. Being lightweight, low profile, and with high planar thermal conductivity, it is commonly used as hot spot heat spreaders in mobile electronics and thermal straps used on satellites.

Metal Alloys

The strength and high thermal conductivity of metals are ideal characteristics in effective thermal management solutions. Boyd employs our in-depth knowledge of metals and their various alloys to design and fabricate rugged, high-performance cooling solutions in a breadth of industries and innumerable applications. Boyd’s metal alloy expertise spans over half a century and focuses on high strength metals such as stainless steel and titanium or high conductivity materials like aluminum and copper.

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