Water-borne bio-based epoxy coatings for metallic substrates
In a recently published work, an environmentally-friendly hydrophobic coating was developed based on a bio-based epoxy with addition of nanoparticles, a silane coupling agent (3-glycidyloxypropyl) trimethoxysilane (GLYMO), and a hydrophobic curing agent.
This coating was applied onto Fe substrates via spin-coating. The water contact angle of ˜153.0° and sliding angle of ˜14.3° were obtained for an optimal coating with 25.0 wt.% nanoparticles loading. The prepared coating exhibited high hydrophobic performance when immersed in water and common solvents including ethanol and acetone for 48 hours. Besides, after exposure to continuous cycles of UV irradiation and water condensation for 24 hours, this optimal coating was able to retain a high hydrophobicity at contact angle of ˜142.7°, indicating its good weathering resistance.
Potential towards corrosion inhibition for other metallic structures
Furthermore, the electrochemical measurements demonstrated that the optimised coating displayed a 2-orders-of-magnitude reduction in its corrosion current density and a positive shift of 0.344 V in its corrosion potential. The corresponding inhibition efficiency was 93.75%. The adsorption energy and diffusion coefficient were calculated using molecules dynamic simulation to further understand the corrosion inhibition behaviour at the molecular scale. This green and bio-based water-repellent epoxy coating holds great potential towards corrosion inhibition for other metallic structures in harsh working environment.
The study is published in: Progress in Organic Coatings Volume 136, November 2019, 105265.
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