Carbon fiber making a comeback for laptops

DigiTimes writes carbon fiber is making a comeback in the laptop market. The site heard Dell is prepping new carbon fiber-reinforced plastic chassis in optional colors for a launch sometime in the second half of 2019. Similar systems are expected to be introduced by HP. These designs have various advantages, but the issue is that carbon fiber-reinforced plastic is still quite expensive.

The sources said that carbon fiber has been used for years to produce chassis for high-end business notebook models by leading vendors such as Dell, HP and Lenovo, thanks to many traits such as lightweight, heat and electricity conductivity, and resistance to high temperature, abrasion and corrosion. But high carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic chassis cost and the availability of only one black color have prevented such chassis from be widely applied to PC production.

Despite production cost for carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic chassis trending downward, the unit sales prices for carbon fiber notebooks will remain relatively high, and therefore it remains to be seen whether such models can win good patronage from consumers, the sources commented.