The Role of Chemistry in Innovating Building Materials

Meeting the Need

Meeting a need or solving a problem through chemistry can be very engaging. It’s exciting to see an innovation we have in the lab – an inspiration - come to life. Taking chemistry that’s been around for decades and turning it into something special is an incredible feeling.

So when the opportunity came along to use our specialty resin to develop cladding crafted by Arcitell, a groundbreaking new product to the construction industry, Hexion jumped at the opportunity.

Current construction materials used are based on traditional natural materials that are slightly modified for end use – typical materials are brick (made from sand) and stone from quarries or cement-based products.

All the above materials require a high degree of energy to produce, modify, process and ship and they can have a high degree of variability and consistency in some cases. In addition, these are heavy, dense materials and thus have advantages and disadvantages.

Can we make something lighter? Easier to work with?

Collaboration

Collaborating with Arcitell, a joint venture of Belden Brick Company and Acell Technologies,  Hexion worked on creating a building material that was lighter, easier to use and offered unique properties. Through the working relationship, Qora Cladding was born.

Arcitell’s formulation combined with Hexion’s synthetic cross-linking polymeric chemistry allows for final products to be shaped and colored into just about any form and helps them be both appealing and functional. 

A high degree of aromatic content in the phenolic resin provides the necessary hardness, along with the low degree of oxygen content in the resin provides excellent fire resistance properties.

The extensive cross-linking density or ability within the resin allows for generating a very strong binding matrix with the rest of the components. This is reflected in the overall high modulus properties when coupled with the glass fiber component.

Also, since the products are combining a small fraction of natural materials with synthetic materials, the energy required to produce and ship Qora Cladding materials is significantly lower than shipping some other building products. The total time and energy required to assemble and construct these products into an application such as cladding are significantly lower at the application site.

It’s an industry changing solution and Hexion is excited to be partnering Arcitell and using chemistry to make it happen!