MATERIAL – COATING PLASTICS
The International Advanced Research Center for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), which is based in Hyderabad, has invented a method for giving plastics a transparent coat of hard material. Such hard-coated plastics find application in area such as helicopters, automobile windshields and windows, aircraft canopies, helmet visors and road markers.
ARCI’s method is an improvement over the existing conventional coating techniques such as spraying, dipping and spinning. This one is based on sol-gel method. Beauty is, these hard-coated plastics are scratch-proof.
“Optically transparent coatings with excellent adhesion on polymer surfaces which can be increased by plasma surface pretreatment,” says ARCI. These coatings have superior hardness and also possess high scratch & abrasion resistance, it says.
Similarly, ARCI has sol-gel coating technology for carbon epoxy composites. New technologies like Ultraviolet radiation curing and plasma surface pretreatment gives enhanced coating functionalities; Entire coating technology is amenable to scale-up.
In this case, ARCI has found that the coats do not wet (retention of hydrophobicity) even after 1,000 cycles of abrasion under 1kg of load. “Low temperature curing conditions were optimized to yield maximum hydrophobicity and abrasion resistance of coatings,” says ARCI
The institute has put up some excellent scientific material on its website. Do check out https://www.arci.res.in/licensing-opportunities#3.
Those interested in buying this technology from ARCI may do so here: https://www.arci.res.in/centres-ctatic-interested-in-collaborating
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