Anti-scratch Properties of Clearcoat after Application of Polymer Coated Silica Ball

Abstract

The vehicle industry uses a multilayer coating system that is one of the most technologically complex coating processes composed of electrical deposition coating, basecoat and clearcoat 1-3. The most important requirements of car coatings are colour, gloss, mar and scratch resistance. The clearcoat is the coating layer that forms the last interface to the environment 3. Even though many progresses regarding on gloss and scratch resistance in automotive painting field have been accumulated, anti-scratching of clearcoating layer in various coating layer is still remaining to be studied 3-7. An excellent scratch resistance and environmental etch resistance of silane based clearcoat led to their acceptance as topcoats for eight of the 10 top selling vehicles since 2000, including Ford Taurus, Toyota Camry and Honda Civic 2. Recently, addition of organicinorganic hybrid materials to clearcoat have been spotlighted since the organic component is related to flexibility and compatibility with clearcoat and inorganic component improves the anti-scratch properties 8-11. We have synthesized nano silica ball, γ-methacryloxy propyl trimethoxy silane modified nano silica ball (NSB-γ-MPS), nano silica ball core-polymethylmethacrylate shell hybrid complex (NSB-PMMA) and nano silica ball core-poly (MMA-AN-styrene) shell structured materials (NSB-MAS) and applied to conventional clearcoat and compared the anti-scratch properties by nano scratch tester 12-15 .