What are the most important properties of FEP foil?

Posted On August 13, 2019

FEP film is used for many purposes. Do you have any idea what the reason is that FEP foil is used so much? This has to do with the unique properties of FEP foil and the advantages that flow from it:

FEP is the melt processable version of PTFE and can be extruded and vacuum formed. FEP has the same chemical resistance and non-stick properties as PTFE. Some of these properties are:

 

  • Excellent thermal stability. FEP keeps its properties at temperatures of -200 to 204 ° C
  • Chemically inert. Resistant to almost all chemicals and solvents, preserving its properties even after prolonged exposure.
  • Best non-stick properties of all plastics.
  • Transparent with high transmittance of ultraviolet (97%)and visible radiation up to (99,9%).
  • Resistant to environmental influences such as ozone, sun- and UV light.
  • Virtually invisible in water due to the lowest refractive index of all plastics.
  • FDA approved.
  • Non-porous.
  • A low dielectric constant high dielectric strength.

Various thicknesses

One of the properties of FEP foil is, for example, that it can be manufactured very thin. The

thinnest variant of FEP foil is only 13 microns thick. To clarify: 1 micron is 1000 times as thin

as 1 millimetre. The thinnest variant is therefore extremely thin.

 

PTFE vs FEP

Even though FEP and PTFE are in the same family of materials there are also quite some differences. If you wish to read more about it I can recommend the following article on FEP vs PTFE