DuPont, Wilmington, Del., announced the recipients of its 2004 Plunkett Awards, who were selected for their degree of innovation, breadth of use and commercial significance with DuPont fluoropolymers. The winners are:⢠WL Gore for its Elixer Guitar Strings with Nanoweb Coating, featuring a thin layer wrap that gives strings longer life. (First place, Americas region)⢠Taconic for TacPreg Bond Ply, a composite used in multilayer printed circuit boards. (Second place, Americas region) ⢠WL Gore for Gore Universal Pipe Gasket, a breakthrough gasket that has low creep, high tensile strength and stress-to-seal characteristics. (Third place, Americas region)⢠Junkosha Inc. for Junflon Hyper PFA Tub, a method of processing PFA to make a new, high-performance PFA tube with low permeability, and increased surface smoothness, light transmittance, dimensional stability and tensile strength. (First place, Asia region)⢠Chukoh for CGS-500L laminate, a long (up to 1 meter) copper-clad laminate for use in high-frequency strip lines, reducing solder connections for less transmission loss. (Second place, Asia region)⢠Nippon Pillar Packing Co. for Uniton sliding bearing, a sliding bearing for earthquake isolation. (Third place, Asia region)⢠Chemplast for Diamond Simulant, a hydrophobid diamond simulant used to evaluate efficiency of recovery equipment and processes. (First place, Europe region)
