Sumfoam

Sumfoam - Polymer nano-foams as a disruptive new class of high-performance materials for the conservation of sustainable and valuable resources on earth

One of the greatest present challenges is the fulfillment of steadily rising energy requirements and the preservation of valuable resources. Old buildings in particular have a strong impact here, as the insulation of the walls is usually of inferior quality and leads to high energy consumption.

In order to achieve better insulation performance, conventional insulation materials with greater layer thicknesses are preferred for cost reasons. In areas where space is limited or where special curvatures and shapes have to be preserved for monument protection, expensive high-performance materials such as aerogels are required. This often leads to compromise solutions, so that performance is avoided due to the costs. Sumfoam enables a completely new class of polymer materials by reducing the pore size within the foam by a factor 1000 compared to common foams. It has been proved for the first time that the production of these foams is possible using high-pressure extraction technology with climate neutral foaming agent in an industrial scale at short cycle times. Therefore, this is the first technology that allows an economical large-scale production of polymer based high-performance materials, which additionally influence numerous fields of applications in a positive and sustainable way.