Developing Nanocomposite as Coating Fillers in SkyCoat Painting material

Organic-inorganic composites are playing a major role in the development of advanced functional nanomaterials due to their distinctive advantages in term of optical, electronic or magnetic properties. As a typical organic material, polymeric materials are widely used in industry since they can be artificially designed on molecular level and controllably manufactured in industrial scale. To improve the physiochemical and mechanical properties of polymer, inorganic fillers are usually introduced into polymer matrix to form composites. Particularly when the size goes down to nano-scale, the composites will further present ameliorated characteristics. Various synthesis and processing techniques, such as in-situ polymerization, melting mixing and solvent evaporation etc., have been developed to make nanocomposites. However, phase separation and aggregation will inevitably occur during the process. Therefore, physical treating and chemical modification are necessary to help improving the interfacial compatibility, which is crucial to the synthesis of inorganic-organic hybrids and the application in painting/coating materials.

The essential core of the whole project is to disperse the nanoparticle(NP), serving as so called light diffuser, into the host matrix which is either water-based or oil-based painting resin to generate the Rayleigh scattering, thus endow the painting/coating film with blue color. In order to achieve ideal optical effect, several requirements should be satisfied for NP. After lab scale synthesis scale optimized and material characterization and testing achieved, production will be promoted to large scale in industry.

Inorganic/organic nanocomposites have been applied in painting industry for a long time. It is believed that mechanical properties of the coating film, such as hardness and scratch resistance, could be efficiently enhanced with polymer-modified inorganic particles incorporated. Besides, compared with pure polymeric panels or painting films, the composite materials exhibit more sustainable fire-retardant capacity. Additionally, when the size distribution, geometrical dimension, dispersion stability and alignment orientation of these inclusions meet certain requirements, attractive optical effect could also be observed. Assisted by illumination devices, the coated mirror/foil will present artificial sky phenomenon, which is significantly meaningful for enclosed space decoration, such as subway ceilings, ship cabins, sun room windows or tunnel walls etc.

Contact Person: Lu Jin