Taking the
Leading
Edge
Photo from Parbat
You’ve heard of ALUULA? You think you know what it is?
In this month’s installment of Taking the Leading Edge, ALUULA’s Chief Scientific Officer Tyler Cuthbert explains the science behind ALUULA’s ultra-light, high-performance composite fabric, and what gives it its mystical properties.
Tyler, tell us a bit about you and what attracted you to ALUULA?
In my spare time I’m a member and Director of the Squamish Windsports Society. We had an event where I got chatting to some of the ALUULA team. I got pretty excited given my background and really saw the opportunity to help push ALUULA to the next level.
I have a PhD in chemistry with a focus in multifunctional polymer materials and expertise in the structure–property relationships associated with polymer design. I am working towards raising the expectation of synthetic materials performance and sustainability through advanced R&D projects.

Let’s dig into the science. What is polyethylene, and what makes it different?
ALUULA products are polyethylene based, which means they’re all composed of some form of polyethylene. Our driver of strength and weight reduction comes from the inclusion of ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE), which is the same molecular structure as all other polyethylene, but with significantly longer chains. Polyethylene (PE) is just a chain of carbon-carbon bonds, with two hydrogen atoms per carbon, creating a relatively simple linear chain of carbon atoms, which is called a backbone.

One type of PE is low density polyethylene, LDPE, which has a specific chain length associated with it. LDPE may have more branching, where a linear chain of carbon-carbon bonds branches from the main chain of carbon bonds. High density polyethylene (HDPE) has less branches and a longer main backbone chain. Ultra-high essentially has no branches and is the longest backbone chain, often having over 100k units of ethylene connected together. The length of the backbone is the easiest way to differentiate between low density, high density, and ultra high molecular weight polyethylene; this aspect changes the resulting characteristics of that polymer.

With that in mind, when we say ALUULA fabric is created using UHMWPE, what does that mean?
One of the components that defines the performance of the ALUULA product is the yarn. In textiles and composite textiles like ours, you can only process UHMWPE certain ways because of physical properties, so there’s limited ways that you can produce and use the material. One way to use UHMWPE is to gel spin it into fibers and use those to create yarns, which can be used to make textiles.
ALUULA uses UHMWPE in the yarn form, which is then combined with other grades of PE, and in combination, provides a synergistic effect where you can get more advantageous properties from the sum of the parts.
How can you visualize a long carbon chain?
Spaghetti! Spaghetti is the easiest way to visualize polymers. When spaghetti is in the box, before you cook it, it represents crystalline polymers: it’s structured and rigid, they are aligned and stacked upon each other. Then when you boil it, it mixes together: it’s tangled and soft, it’s amorphous in the polymer world. There is still some structure to that piece of spaghetti – you can pull it and it becomes straight again, like a polymer. The difference between low density, high density and ultra high is the length of the spaghetti noodle. If you take the stuff you buy off the shelf, we would consider that a low-density polyethylene as it has 500 repeating units (or monomers). Then you’re going to take 100 of those noodles, connect them together, and that’s the equivalent is high density. To make ultra-high, you need to make a polymer that is equivalent to thirty of those HDPE polymers. To visualize that, it would be able to stretch down the street instead of just in your pan.
Why does that give ALUULA it’s unique performance attributes?
ALUULA ultimately gets its strength from combining ultra-high with other PE forms. You can think of the material like rebar reinforced concrete. We have rebar (the UHMWPE yarn) in there for the structural rigidity, strength and performance, and the cement is the material that’s encases and holds everything together. In ALUULA what’s unique is that we only use PE whereas other competitors use a mixture of materials, often referred to as Dacron, which is a mixture of polyester and a melamine resin (DuPont’s brand name of polyester is Dacron).
The density of polyester is just under 1.4 g/cm3 and melamine is just under 1.6 g/cm3. To decrease weight, you need to use less dense materials but ensure that those materials have increased mechanical properties. UHMWPE can replace the polyester textile with an increased strength, decreased weight and a density of just below 1g/cm3.
Traditionally, composite textiles have used UHMWPE sandwiched between panels or films, but these require glues or adhesives to stick these different materials together. PE’s low surface energy makes sticking anything to it difficult.
ALUULA uses UHMPWE that is encased in a matrix of polyethylene. Since our composite is made only of PE, welding them to one another is relatively straightforward, and when heat-bonded together it can produce a seam that can have equal or greater strength than the composite itself.
Photo from Durston
What makes ALUULA fabric more durable than other materials?
As mentioned above, one of the biggest differentiators is that we don’t use adhesives, which means there is less reactive material that is susceptible to degradation. Everything in the world is susceptible to reactivity. UV, moisture, and oxygen together can react with these polymers ultimately reducing performance. An adhesive has chemical functional groups that are more reactive and susceptible to oxidation, hydrolysis, or other destructive reactive pathways.
As ALUULA is 100% PE, the elimination of adhesives mitigates the risk of failure and delamination. In addition, ALUULA uses a composite structure, which removes the discrete layers typical of a classical laminate, reducing the likelihood of failure through a loss of layer-to-layer adhesion.
Why does using polyethylene mean that ALUULA fabric has good abrasion, puncture or tear resistance?
Typically, virgin polyethylene materials have a low surface energy and a low coefficient of friction. Reduced friction equals reduced wear. The greater the concentration of UHMWPE, the greater the ability for abrasion resistance, which comes from the unique properties of UHMWPE (the length of the polymer). Heavier weight, densely packed UHMWPE textiles have enhanced puncture resistance. As reduce the weight of a composite textile, the weave will become more open, which leads to reduced puncture resistance. A puncture in ALUULA fabric tends not to propagate due to the UHMWPE textile pattern and structure of our textile.

What is the main difference between our fabric families, and why are their performance attributes different?
Our fabric families focus on providing unique features that are ideal for certain applications. For example, windsports and sailing prioritize weight and strength, so Aeris™ is a good match. ALUULA textile can be welded together without the use of adhesives using heat or ultrasonic methods and can be obtained with increased bias strength with the line of Aeris X™.
Graflyte™ material has a softer feel, is easily welded together, and has good abrasion resistance, making it an easy product to work with to create high-performance packs. The UHMWPE used provides high-end strength, typically coming in significantly lighter (often more than half the weight) than materials it is replacing. The type of PE used in these materials is different than Aeris™ and the combination with UHMWPE results in the different feel and performance properties.
Durlyte™ utilizes more UHMWPE material and is therefore on the higher end of weights of ALUULA Fabric. This product prioritizes durability and abrasion resistance at a weight that is difficult to match. The ability to weld Durlyte™ results in a material that can be utilized in combination with other ALUULA materials and key areas of construction to achieve more durable products for the harshest environments.
In the future, will we adapt our materials to suit different applications?
Different markets value different features of a material, for example, the performance outdoor market does not value the same features as windsports. What we try to do is identify the key performance metrics that are valuable to individual markets and determine how an ALUULA product can bring innovation to that market. Then we can design our material to push that market into higher performance brackets. For tents and backpacks, construction may be just as important as the strength and weight of the products, which allows the weakest link, such as seams, to be improved to a level whereby they are now the strongest part of the product.

How are we currently working with our customers to maximize the performance fabric?
It’s a multi-pronged approach. We are working with all our customers to help them adapt their production processes to enable them to work effectively with ALUULA, as it does handle differently to other fabrics. This includes guiding them on traditional fabrication methods such as sewing, taping etc. In combination with this, we are building out guides for those companies looking to advance their construction techniques to no-sew fully welded products, which simplify the manufacturing process and provide products with increased durability
What’s next for ALUULA?
ALUULA is focusing on the next stages of growth and will continue to push the boundaries of what is expected from textiles in the realm of weight, strength, and other valuable characteristics. Most products on the market are in their first iteration, and we will continue to develop and increase the performance of our fabric for the markets we currently sell to.
From a developmental standpoint, we are building out our technical capabilities, equipment and expanding our team to ensure we have the expertise available to quickly push the boundaries of the composite textile market and continue to be the leaders in innovation of lightweight high-performance materials.
Even though we haven’t chatted about sustainability, it is something are focusing on this year, and we are working towards providing circularity of our materials. More to come on this later in the year!
Ends
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ALUULA is a public company traded on the TSX:V under the symbol AUUA. All material content in this newsletter has been previously disclosed by ALUULA in its public disclosure documents, available on its profile at www.sedarplus.ca.