Novel protective coating for bamboo
Scientists portray a transparent, hard-wearing and bio-based organic/silica hybrid coating for bamboo with enhanced flame retardant and antifungal properties.
As an abundant natural resource, bamboo with enhanced flame retardancy and mildew resistance after surface treatment has a wider range of applications. Researchers have now prepared a new organic–inorganic coating by thermal curing between vanillin-derived epoxy (VEP) and hyperbranched siloxane (HPSi). When the mass ratio of VEP and HPSi was 20:28, the obtained Schiff base hybrid coating exhibited visible light transmittance over 90% and the highest pencil hardness of 9H.
Excellent mildew resistance
The fabricated coating also showed remarkable solvent wipe resistance (Xylene and ethanol: 1000 cycles) and continuous abrasion (cheesecloth test: 5000 cycles). In addition, the hydrophobic and dense coating endowed the coated bamboo excellent mildew resistance even in high humidity (97%). Due to the high thermal stability, the coated bamboo presented a significant enhanced flame resistance with a limiting oxygen index value of 29.1%. From a broader perspective, the Schiff base hybrid coating with excellent comprehensive performance and facile preparation process display great potential for practical application for bamboo or other substrates.
The study has been published in Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 167, June 2022.
