New combination of antifouling and cavitation erosion resistance
A new paper reports on a novel polyurethane coating with heterogeneity structure induced by microphase separation that exhibits new combination of antifouling and cavitation erosion resistance.
Cavitation erosion and biofouling are the most severe factors of metal materials fatigue failure and degradation in seawater. In a new study, a series of hydrophobic fluorinated polyurethane coatings (SFPU-x) with various contents of fluorinated isocyanate prepolymer (FIP) were synthesized via a simple addition reaction for anti-cavitation erosion property combined with biofouling resistance.
The antifouling tests were conducted using Nitzschia Closterium cell and the fluorescence labeled bovine serum albumin (FITC-BSA) as fouling models.
Excellent antifouling and cavitation erosion resistance abilities
Especially, the SFPU-5 coating with 5% FIP showed excellent antifouling and cavitation erosion resistance abilities due to surface heterogeneity microstructure, the attachment rates of FITC-BSA (1.1 %) and Nitzschia cell (1.3 %) far less than that of SFPU-0 coating (72.3 % and 85.1 %), respectively. Marine field test for 30 days have also proven the antifouling properties of the SFPU-5 coating. In addition, there were no obvious holes and cracks on the surface of SFPU-5 after 10 h of cavitation, the cumulative mass loss were 2.7 mg and 2.9 mg in deionised water and in seawater, respectively.
The study has been published in Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 151, February 2021.
