Project

Development of superhydrophobic coating for polypropylene

We improve the superhydrophobic properties of polypropylene through a coating with high resistance to chemical agents and wear.

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Objetive. Making their polypropylene superhydrophobic

Our client, an end-user equipment manufacturer, wants to improve the superhydrophobic properties of a polypropylene piece of their product. During use, this piece is in contact with water and chemical agents, so the treatment or coating we develop must have high resistance.

Solution. A superhydrophobic coating with high resistance

The first step was to know our client’s polypropylene and its resistance requirements. We jointly defined what would be a good result in terms of superhydrophobicity and discovered that in their case the most important thing was the dynamic contact angle for their application.

The second part of the project consisted of selecting, applying and optimizing the coatings that we considered most appropriate for your case. As parameters for the selection we took into account not only the technical part, but we also carried out an economic and industrial evaluation.

After selecting the coatings, we optimized the experimental parameters that were involved in both the formulation of the coatings and their application. Among them, we highlight sample pretreatment, surface activation, solvent, additives, coating curing, incubation time, type of molecule and concentration.

To carry out the evaluation of the developed formulations, we used the static and dynamic contact angle with sliding as a characterization tool. In addition, we carried out coating adhesion tests, self-cleaning and anti-biofilm capacity, resistance to different pH conditions and mechanical resistance to abrasion.

Finally, we selected the coating formulation that offered the best performance and manufactured several prototypes to test in real application.