Plastic products have become an indispensable part of our life. Silicone products have always been a high-end series among our common plastic products. Can TPE thermoplastic elastomers replace silicone in recent years? Has always been the focus of attention.

Let's first look at a brief introduction of TPE and silica gel:

TPE is a common thermoplastic elastomer material, which has high tensile strength and injection molding characteristics. It is widely used, environmentally friendly and nontoxic, and easy to match colors.

Soft touch, excellent weather resistance, good fatigue resistance and low temperature resistance, excellent processing performance, which can be recycled for many times and has low cost. It can be coated and bonded with PP, PA, PC, ABS, PS and other matrix materials by secondary injection molding with high peel strength, and can also be molded separately.

Silica gel can be called silicic acid gel, which is a granular porous silica hydrate with transparent or milky white appearance. It is prepared by adding acid to sodium silicate, washing and drying. It is chemically stable, nontoxic and tasteless, insoluble in water and any solvent, and has good biocompatibility. Generally speaking, it can be divided into organic silica gel and inorganic silica gel.

Let's take a look at the main application areas of TPE and silica gel:

TPE is widely used in daily necessities, toys, electronic products, automobiles and other industries because of its wide hardness range, superior processability, low price and environmental protection.

Silica gel has unique biocompatibility, stable chemical properties, innocuity and tasteless characteristics, which make it widely used in medical devices, medical human organs, baby products, kitchen products and so on.

Therefore, TPE can replace most silicone products in daily necessities, toys and other industries, and its cost performance is also higher. Silica gel has unique advantages in medical devices, medical imitation of human organs, etc. It is difficult to be replaced by TPE.