Coatings World - April 2011

$150 million worth of coatings annually. He estimated that the entire company buys nearly a $1 billion in coatings each year. In terms of UV, all of the hard coat and 90 percent of the finish coat is UV cured.

Among the paint and coatings companies that meet Jabil’s requirements are AkzoNobel, PPG, Red Spot, Fujikura, Cashew, Becker’s and BASF, and very few others, Richardson noted.

He added that coatings suppliers must show how they add value in terms of costs, processing time and enhanced marketing ability. They must also be able to work on existing lines or use equipment that can be inserted into an existing line, and must be available globally.

Richardson’s second talk, “How to Truly Calculate the Cost of a Coating,” looked at the economics of coatings. He noted that first and foremost, quality must be a given, and determining applied costs is essential. “With quality as a given, what do we fall back on?” Richardson asked. “Math, chemistry and physics. That is what paint is all about.

“The great myth is that the cost per gallon is more than just
a number,” Richardson added. “It is only part of the picture.”
There are a number of factors involved. Cost per gallon, vol-
ume of solids, transfer efficiency, film thickness and production
costs, including processing, labor, waste disposal and inventory,
all are part of the overall equation. For example, higher volume
solids materials provide more coverage, while reducing costs of
freight, handling and storage. Even if the product costs more per
gallon, the applied cost might be less for the higher volume solids
than for a less expensive alternative.

“If you don’t know your costs, you are guessing at profits,” Richardson concluded.

Conference Sessions

The first day’s talks were divided into two pairs of concur-
rent sessions. Session One covered Coatings - Functional, Films,
Light Management, and was moderated by Mike Idacavage of
Cytec. Doug DeLong of DoctorUV.com led off the session with
his talk on “Reducing Flexible Electronics and Solar Module
Costs with Atmospheric Plasma Surface Modification.”
“Solar is a technology of the future,” DeLong said. “Success-
ful commercialization of low cost, high efficiency fabrications is
highly dependent upon fabrication methods which employ con-
tinuous processing techniques.”
In his talk on “Photonic Curing Sintering for Metal Inks on
Films,” Stan Farnsworth of NovaCentrix said that scaling up
to production is now becoming more important. “The chal-
lenge is to scale up to square meters and kilometers,”
Farnsworth said. “Printed electronics is at the tipping point to-
ward manufacturing.”
Farnsworth noted that screen inks are typically laid down in
a thicker layer, thus offering the best conductivity, but require a
higher processing temperature. Nanotechnology ink costs
more, but can be processed at a lower temperature. As for sub-
strate, PET and paper’s costs are favorable, but the temperature
processing is not there. The NovaCentrix PulseForge tools re-
lease an intense pulse of light, which does not heat the substrates.

“Low temperature materials such as cellulose and PET are now feasible substrates for high-performance printed electronics applications,” Farnsworth added.

Fusion UV’s Kazuo Ashikaga next discussed, “The Challenges
Associated with Micro Embossed UV Coatings for the Optical
Film Applications.” He was followed by Teresa Ramos of Cam-
brios Technologies, who discussed, “Cambrios’ ClearOhm Trans-
parent Conductor: A Higher Performing, Wet Processable
Alternative to Conductive Oxides.”
Cambrios Technologies’s ClearOhm transparent conductors
are used in a wide range of products, including touch screens,
LCDs, thin film photovoltaics and organic LEDs. The company
uses slot die coatings and gravure, after which the transistors
pass through a UV curing station.

“Ink and UV clearcoat materials have been developed and
demonstrated good carrier performance on our 1.3 meter wide
line,” Ramos said. “Our cost versus indium tin oxide is half
the price.”
Cytec’s Marcus Hutchins then analyzed “Energy Curable
Coatings for Electronics.” He noted that energy curing’s value
proposition is found in its faster line speed, curing in millisec-
onds; 100 percent solids, thus releasing no VOCs; and its resist-
ance properties.

Potential markets for UV and EB curing includes products that require scratch resistant coatings, haptic feel, pressure sensitive adhesives, or easy-to-clean applications.

“Energy curable technology is a well understood science with
significant growth opportunity,” Hutchins said. “There are a
wide variety of different base chemistries available to the for-
mulator that can be formulated to have a number of perform-
ance properties.”
Session Two covered Adhesives, Potting Compounds, Di-
electrics, and was moderated by Michael Dvorchak of Bayer Ma-
terialScience.

“High Throughput, Low Heat UV Curing for Inks and Adhesives” was the topic of the talk given by Mick O’Brien of Lumen Dynamics Group, Inc., who examined UV LED curing. Glenn Alers of the University of California, Santa Cruz, focused on “Reliability of Encapsulation Materials for Photovoltaic Modules.” He offered insights into key reasons for failure of encapsulation for various PV technologies. “UV/EB Laminating Adhesives for Stabilized Films,” by Joshua Oliver of Sartomer USA, LLC, covered curing through PEN and stabilized PET.

Inks, Paste, Dielectric Coatings was the focus of Session Three, moderated by Lonnie Murphy of Fusion UV Systems, Inc. Eugene Siztmann of BASF led off with “New Cationic Photoinitiators for Electronics, Printing and Coatings Applications.” “Printing and electronics rely on cationically curable materials for enhanced performance,” Sitzmann noted, covering recent developments in cationic photoinitiators from BASF for the North American market. Tim Luong of Fujifilm Dimatix, Inc. followed with his talk on “An Efficient, Compact and Easy-to-Use Customizable Inkjet UV Curing System for Dimatix Materials Printers.”