UV-curable epoxy acrylate composite coatings with high performance
A recently published study introduces UV-curable epoxy acrylate composite coatings with high flexibility, super-hydrophobicity, wear-resistance and self-healing properties.
Photo-curing coating has the advantages of environmental friendliness, short curing time, high productive efficiency and low energy consumption. However, it is also a challenge to overcome the weakness of brittleness, water vapor damage and repairing difficulty. Researchers now have prepared a flexible and self-healing epoxy acrylic coating by introducing dynamic disulfide bond and dangling chain into the resin system, furthermore, sprayed nano-SiO2 to construct the micro surface structure to endow the coating with super-hydrophobicity.
Three birds with one stone
The introduction of dynamic disulfide bond has endowed the coating with self-healing ability, while the diluent as dangling chain has promoted the mobility of molecular chain, more importantly, which not only improved the self-healing efficiency of the coating, but also reduced the brittleness, three birds with one stone. Moreover, silane coupling agent was used to modify the nano-SiO2 particles to enhance the abrasive resistance of the coating. The coating exhibits outstanding comprehensive performance: the water contact angle can reach 155°, the self-healing efficiency can reach 97 %, wear-resistance greatly increases by 40 %. These results are expected to provide some references for developing UV-curable coating with high performance.
The study has been published in Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 182, September 2023.
