Polycarbonate (PC) plastics are naturally transparent amorphous thermoplastics. Although they are commercially available in a variety of colors (maybe translucent and maybe not), the raw material allows internal transmission of light in almost the same capacity as glass. Polycarbonate polymers are used to produce a variety of materials and are particularly useful when impact resistance and / or transparency are a requirement of the product (for example, in bulletproof glass).
PC is commonly used for plastic lenses in glasses, in medical devices, automotive components, protective equipment, greenhouses, digital discs (CD, DVD, and Blu-ray), and outdoor lighting fixtures. Polycarbonate also has very good heat resistance and can be combined with fire retardant materials without significant material degradation. Polycarbonate plastics are engineering plastics in the sense that they are typically used for more robust and capable materials, such as impact resistant “glass-like” surfaces.
Another characteristic of polycarbonate is that it is very flexible. It can typically be formed at room temperature without cracking or breaking, similar to aluminum sheet. Although deformation can be simpler with the application of heat, even small angles are possible without it. This characteristic makes polycarbonate sheets particularly useful in prototyping applications where the sheet lacks workability (for example, when transparency is required or when a non-conductive material with good electrical insulation properties is required).
Now that you know what it is used for, you can examine some of the key properties of polycarbonate. PC is classified as a "thermoplastic" (as opposed to "thermoset"), and the name has to do with how the plastic responds to heat. Thermoplastic materials become liquid at their melting point (155 degrees Celsius in the case of polycarbonate). An important useful attribute about thermoplastics is that they can be heated to their melting point, cooled, and reheated again without significant degradation. Instead of burning, thermoplastics like polycarbonate liquefy, allowing them to be easily injection molded and then later recycled.
Polycarbonate is also an amorphous material, which means that it does not exhibit the ordered characteristics of crystalline solids. Typically, amorphous plastics demonstrate a tendency to gradually soften (that is, they have a wider range between their glass transition temperature and their melting point) rather than exhibiting a sharp solid-to-liquid transition as is the case in crystalline polymers.. Copolymer in which it is composed of several different types of monomers in combination with each other.
