Coatings
We develop and apply layers on a material to enhance its surface properties or provide it with new functionalities.
Objective. Superhydrophobic parts with high resistance to wear and chemical agents.
Our customer, a manufacturer of end-user equipment, wants to improve hydrophobicity of several plastic parts of their equipment. These parts are in contact with water and chemical agents during their use, so the treatment or coating that we develop must have a high resistance. In addition, the pieces will be subjected to manual cleaning, so they need to have good resistance to abrasion.
Solution. We developed a coating based on graphene
The first step was to know the different pieces and materials that our customer want to improve. We defined a working methodology with the customer to achieve a unique coating that would be compatible with the selected pieces and thus simplify their future application in production. Our solution, based on the high demands in terms of hydrophobicity and resistance, was to use an organic coating and add graphene to it. In this way the organic part would help us in terms of hydrophobicity properties and the graphene in terms of strength.
In the next part of the project, we designed the coating and selected the molecules to be used.
Prior to the coating application stage, we performed an activation study of our client’s plastic, as this is a critical aspect when applying coatings on plastics to achieve good adhesion. In this case, tests were carried out with plasma, pyrosil, flame and ozone. For the application of the coating we used both dip-coating and spraying.
To evaluate the improvements of the graphene-based coating, we used wettability (contact angle) as a characterization method, both static and dynamic, since in this application the water is in motion and it is a more realistic measure. Complementarily, we analyzed the morphology and changes in the chemical composition of the coated materials by scanning electron microscopy.
The last step consisted of evaluating the best options through validation tests defined with the customer. After these tests, we selected the final coating with the greatest improvements in surface properties and made several prototypes for testing on the actual equipment.
The final report consisted of a presentation in which we showed them the best coating once optimized for their materials combined with the most suitable activation technique.
