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Thomas Hjertberg Senior Advisor, Innovation and Technology |
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Biography Dr. Thomas Hjertberg was born 1951 and became interested in chemistry already during his compulsory years in school. After taking a M.Sc. in chemistry 1974 at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, he felt that he would like to deepen his knowledge in polymer technology and became a Ph.D. student. His subject was the relation between defect structures and thermal stability in PVC. This meant to analyse structural defects at an order of 1 per 1000 monomer units with NMR as a major tool. Another line was to find relations between the polymerization conditions and the concentration of the defects. After defending his Ph.D. thesis in 1981, he continued as a researcher at Chalmers and started to broaden his research interests. After a few years, in 1986, he became associate professor, and 1991 full professor in polymer technology at Chalmers. In this function he was also head of the Department of Polymer Technology. For a period, 1995 – 2000 he also served as Dean of the School of Chemical Engineering. The relations between structure and properties can be given as a headline for his research interests. Apart from the PVC area, he became involved in research on conjugated polymers for LED and solar cell applications, and side chain liquid crystalline polymers for various electro-optical applications. The area that has become the dominating one is however, structure-property relations in polyolefin, polyethylene and polypropylene. A major area is crosslinking of polyethylene, both with peroxides and with silane technology. Another is thermo-oxidative stability and stabilization, and as an example from Borealis, he can mention development of stabilization of pipe materials exposed to chlorine dioxide. Finally, he has also worked a lot with surface structure and modification and the effect on adhesion, e.g. adhesion in polyethylene- aluminium laminates and PUR lacquer adhesion towards polypropylene. During his academic career, he had always had a close cooperation with the industry. Finally, he decided to leave the academic world and in 2009, he joined Borealis where he now works as scientific advisor in InnoTech, the research organization of Borealis. Altogether, he has been advisor to 20 Ph.D. students, has published ca 140 scientific papers and has contributed to 20+ patents. Abstract This presentation shares about Borealis’ commitment to addressing global challenges. Our philosophy on Innovation and a video will be shared by Dr Hjertberg. Value creation through innovation is at the core of Borealis’ polyolefin strategy and we engage with the industry’s value chain to build our success in the solar industry. Dr Hjertberg will touch on how Borealis leverages on our experience in the Energy business and translate its benefits into the solar application. Lastly, Dr Hjertberg will share about QuentysTM, Borealis solar products which will bring quality to the entire solar world. |
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