Materials for Design

Ionomer Resins

The less common families of engineering polymers, like ionomer resins, tend not to register at the forefront of designers’ minds, probably because they have performance characteristics that are best suited to very specific product requirements. But what’s important to me as a designer is that, although it would be simpler if you could categorize the properties of materials based on their product applications, there are some plastics that have applications and formulations that are so diverse it is difficult to characterize them in a straightforward way. Ionomers falls into this category, with Surlyn^®, one of the big engineering polymer brands from Dupont, being one of the most recognized ionomer brands.

Essentially, this polymer ...