Glass bubble,Hollow glass microspheres , Glass sphere beads, Manufacturer & suppliers

Hollow glass microspheres are a ultra-lightweight, inorganic, non-metallic, hollow alternative to conventional fillers and additives. They find applications in many demanding industries such as paints, coatings, adhesives, sealants, cast polyester, compounding and many more. The low-density material is used to reduce weight, lower costs and enhance product properties.

The unique spherical shape of the hollow glass microspheres offer a number of important benefits, including higher filler loading, lower viscosity and reduced shrinkage. It further makes it more adaptable to a variety of production processes including spraying, casting and molding.

The chemically stable soda-lime-borosilicate glass composition provides excellent water resistance to create more stable emulsions. They are non-combustible and non-porous, so they do not absorb resin. The hollow glass microspheres also create stable voids, which result in low thermal conductivity and low dielectric constant.

Hollow glass microspheres are available in a variety of sizes and grades to help you meet your product and processing requirements.

The Global Hollow Glass Microspheres market is anticipated to rise at a considerable rate during the forecast period, between 2022 and 2028. In 2021, the market is growing at a steady rate and with the rising adoption of strategies by key players, the market is expected to rise over the projected horizon.

Hollow glass microspheres are a new type of material developed widely in recent years with excellent performance. The main components of the product are borosilicates, hollow spheres with a particle size of 10-250 μm and a wall thickness of 1-2 μm. This product has the advantages of light weight, low thermal conductivity, high strength and good chemical stability. After special treatment, it has the properties of lipophilic and hydrophobic, and it is very easy to disperse in organic materials such as resins. Hollow glass microspheres are widely used in glass fiber reinforced plastics, artificial marble, artificial agate, and other composite materials, and have obvious weight-reducing effect and sound insulation effect, so that the products have good crack resistance and reworkability. Widely used in aviation, aerospace, new high-speed trains, luxury yachts, thermal insulation coatings, bowling, and other areas, and played a unique good role.

First of all, the increasing demand for hollow glass microspheres drives the market size structural properties such as recyclability, reusability increase demand for efficiency, and modernization of infrastructure. Second, North America dominates the global hollow glass microspheres market, and is experiencing high growth owing to the increased demand for efficiency in many end-user industries. Product innovation in terms of quality and application development is another driving factor for the growth of hollow glass microspheres market in North America. The U.S. and Canada are expected to lead the hollow glass microspheres market in the North American region, the U.S. Asia Pacific is growing at a significant rate as these materials have started gaining prominence in this region. The growth in this region can be attributed to increased consumption of hollow glass microspheres in China.

The Global Hollow Glass Microspheres Market Size was estimated at USD 209.43 million in 2021 and is projected to reach USD 349.72 million by 2028, exhibiting a CAGR of 7.60% during the forecast period.

Polymer is a very broad term that encompassed a large amount of materials. The world “polymer” refers to materials that are composed of repeating identical molecules.

The type of molecule, the length of the chain, the amount of cross-linking, the presence of various chemical groups – all affect the behavior as well as chemical and physical properties of the material.

Many different polymers can be used as raw materials for hollow glass microspheres. The most common polymer microspheres are made from polyethylene, polystyrene, and poly(methyl methacrylate).

The goal of the study was to find a cost-effective composition of a particle reinforced composite that is light in weight but has sufficient mechanical properties. The matrix of the particulate composite is unsaturated polyester resin that is reinforced with alumina trihydrate particles. Part of the alumina trihydrate proportion was replaced with hollow glass microspheres to reduce weight and save costs.

In order to find out the influence of the light filler on the physical and mechanical properties of composites, materials with different percentages of the light filler were prepared. Test specimens were cut from moulded sheets that were fabricated with vacuum assisted extruder. Tensile strength, indentation hardness measured with a Barcol impressor, and density were determined. Based on the experimental data a multi-criteria optimization problem was formulated and solved to find the optimal design of the material. Artificial neural networks and a hybrid genetic algorithm were used.

The optimal solution is given as a Pareto curve to represent the distinction between the density and selected mechanical properties of the composite material. The composite material filled with 6% hollow glass microspheres showed 3% loss in the tensile strength and 26% loss in the surface hardness compared to the composition without the filler. The weight decreased by 13% compared with the initial composition. The addition of hollow glass microspheres did not lower the net value of the material, it increased 7%.

This study deals with the hydrostatic strength of hollow glass microspheres composites, commonly known as syntactic foams, using model materials made of 0.15 g/cm³ hollow glass microspheres with 3 types of matrix, two epoxies and one paraffin.

More than 100 model material samples are characterized for that work. The hydrostatic strength of these composite materials is determined in a pressure vessel, which can go up to 100 MPa. Two major parameters are studied: stiffness of the matrix and hollow glass microsphere volume content within the composite material.

The results clearly show that the hydrostatic strength of the syntactic foam can be improved by an increase in matrix stiffness or a reduction in hollow glass microspheres content. Based on experimental data an empirical model with two parameters is proposed to describe the hydrostatic strength of syntactic foam. The relevance of the model is discussed.

Hollow glass microspheres offer numerous functional advantages for biopharmaceuticals. These tiny spherical particles can be derived from a growing range of organic and inorganic materials, making them an extremely versatile solution for novel drug delivery systems.

Further research and development (R&D) into new compositions continues to create new opportunities for microsphere technology deployment.

Researchers have generated porous or hollow glass microspheres to enhance their drug-carrying capacity. Such hollow glass microspheres have been used to protect fragile drug compounds in vivo and to extend their bioavailability. There have also been many strides forward with biodegradable polymer hollow glass microspheres for controlled drug delivery.

The growing availability of highly tunable hollow glass microspheres has significant ramifications for treating numerous conditions, including embolisation therapy, lipoatrophy in AIDS patients, stress urinary incontinence (SUI) treatment), and so on. Microsphere technology is also of growing importance in precision medicine and targeted therapies for cancer and cardiovascular disease. The future of microsphere technology is bright.

Nowadays, with the continuous improvement of domestic fire safety requirements, the development of materials with better thermal insulation and flame retardant performance is of great significance to modern building energy conservation.

Hollow glass microspheres modified polyurethane sponge (PU-HGM) with enhanced flame retardancy is prepared by dipping hollow glass microsphere onto PU sponge through polydimethylsiloxane. The PU-HGM sponge exhibits porous network structure with rich micron sized pores, as well as the hollow glass microsphere with closed hollow spherical structure endow the prepared PU-HGM better thermal insulation performance, and the thermal conductivity is 0.050 W m−1 K−1.

Besides, the PU-HGM maintains excellent elasticity of PU sponge, and shows strong mechanical strength, the stress of PU-HGM sponge was as high as 882 kPa at 70% strain after 3 cycles. More importantly, compared with pure PU sponge, the PU-HGM shows excellent flame retardancy. It keeps its original shape after combustion, and no obvious flame was observed on the surface of PU-HGM sponge.

Thus, combined with its high mechanical strength, low material cost, simple and scalable preparation method, the as-prepared PU-HGM sponge shows great potential for application in the field of heat insulation and flame retardant.

Hollow glass microspheres are thin-walled micro-borosilicate glass beads. They are chemically very stable, have a very low density and high compressive strength.

Glues

Weight reduction; sound absorption; reduced contraction; improved thermal and electrical insulation.

Finishes

Cost reduction; high filling degree with low viscosity; improved flow properties, gloss and processability; higher hardness and abrasion resistance; reduction of UV degradation.

Injection moulding/extrusion

Improved level of detail; cost reduction; improved rigidity; reduced warpage.

Fillers

Weight reduction; cost reduction; sound reduction; reduced contraction; improved thermal and electrical insulation.

Sealants

Weight reduction; cost reduction; sound reduction; reduced contraction; improved thermal and electrical insulation.

Hollow glass microspheres, also known as hollow glass beads, have been in use for at least 100 years. Hollow glass microsphere technology was developed in the 1950s as a product of manufacturing solid glass beads. Since that time, many industries have come to rely on both solid and hollow glass microspheres as a major component of their products and processes.

Initially used primarily as a filler for plastics in the 1960s, it was used in many industries and thousands of applications, including aerospace and military materials, molded plastic parts, reflective highway signs, oil and gas, recreation, paints and coatings, transportation, construction, mining explosives, personal care, cosmetics and consumer products.

In recent years, hollow glass microspheres have experienced outstanding growth due to the emergence of new high-value, high-growth industries and the market for high-quality hollow glass microspheres with perfect sphericity, tight tolerances and particle size distribution. These industries include biomedical, life sciences, microscopy, automotive, high-tech devices and specialty applications.

Hollow glass microsphere is a kind of hollow, thin-walled, high-strength, smooth surface micro sphere, which is a new micro scale lightweight inorganic material developed in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to the advantages of low density, high strength, low heat conduction, high wave transmission and good stability, it also has excellent properties that other non-metallic mechanical materials do not have, such as insulation, self-lubricating, sound insulation, fire resistance, corrosion resistance and radiation protection. Therefore, it is widely used, even indispensable in some special fields.

In the early years, it was found that some by-products of fly ash were pearl like hollow microspheres with a diameter of 20~200 under the microscope μ The shell thickness varies from 5% to 30% of the diameter, and its main components are SiO2, Al2O3, CaO, MgO, Na2O, K2O, etc. This kind of sphere has small specific gravity, high surface pressure, strong wear resistance, good flame retardancy, good acid resistance and high temperature resistance, so it has been exploited for new functions. At the early stage of the development of artificial hollow glass beads, due to the high cost, they were mainly used in cutting-edge fields such as aerospace and national defense. Later, the United States and Japan took the lead in the research and development and mass production of hollow glass beads, which formed a situation where hollow glass beads were monopolized by foreign countries and became one of the neck materials in China.

With the development of science and technology in China, hollow glass beads can be industrialized in China, and gradually become a new functional material with relatively low price and rich functions, which has been widely used in military and civilian fields such as thermal insulation materials, insulation materials, composite materials, petrochemical, coatings, rubber, etc.

When visiting the application exhibition hall of Shenglaite, the technicians introduced to the small group that Shenglaite’s hollow glass beads have been successfully applied in more than 20 downstream fields, including daily consumer goods, industrial supplies and cutting-edge aerospace fields.

In terms of 5G communication, hollow glass beads can help improve the transmission rate because their hollow glass material has a low dielectric constant of 1.0~2.0. At present, downstream applications involved include 5G base station and radome materials, 5G mobile phone middle frame and backplane, Internet of Things equipment, etc.

In terms of lightweight of rubber, elastomer and vehicles, hollow glass beads have a good role in reducing the specific gravity, which can reduce the weight of rubber and plastic composites by 8%~10%. In addition, hollow glass beads can also effectively improve the processing performance of materials, increase rigidity and resilience, and improve a series of special functions of materials, such as heat insulation, sound insulation and noise reduction, and flame retardancy. They are widely used in shoes, flexible pillows, car shells, special parts and other products.

In the coating industry, the characteristics of hollow glass microspheres, such as micron particle size, microsphere effect and hollowness, endow the coating with better heat insulation and heat preservation effect, and create a new cooling coating integrating reflection, radiation and efficient heat insulation. It is not only used in military and aerospace equipment, but also widely used in oil pipelines, oil storage tanks, communication base stations, large grain storage silos and other industries.

As an anti-corrosion coating, the addition of hollow microspheres makes the product have better antifouling, anti-corrosion, anti ultraviolet, anti yellowing, and scratch resistance effects, which can be widely used in weather resistant sunscreen and thermal insulation outdoor coatings, automotive coatings, ship antifouling coatings, anti-corrosion coatings, etc.

In the adhesive industry, the addition of hollow microspheres can reduce the density of the adhesive, reduce the volume cost, improve the rheological property of the adhesive, improve the thixotropy and chemical corrosion resistance, and give the product better sound insulation, heat insulation, low heat conduction and dielectric properties, as well as better anti warping and anti cracking properties. Hollow glass beads are widely used in adhesives such as silicone, epoxy resin, acrylic acid, polyurethane, synthetic rubber, etc. In addition to the above, hollow glass beads have a very typical application for oilfield cementing, which is also the field with the largest consumption for a long time. The use of oilfield cementing includes low-density drilling fluid and cementing cement.

The low-density drilling fluid added with hollow glass beads not only has higher chemical stability and excellent fluidity, but also has better lubrication effect. It can reduce friction during drilling, extend the service life of drill pipe, drill bit and other equipment, and greatly improve the drilling speed and operating efficiency. The addition of hollow glass beads in cementing cement gives the product the characteristics of low density, high strength and easy flow. It is one of the main ways to solve the problem of low leakage and low return of cement slurry in low pressure and leaky wells. It can effectively control the water loss rate and prevent pollution. The 24h compressive strength can reach more than 15MPa, and can improve the cementing quality and extend the life of oil wells.

ARTICLE SOURCE: Powder ring network