Coatings World - March 2015

Kerry Pianoforte, Editor

The American Coatings Association (ACA) held its CoatingsTech Conference March 9-11 at the Marriott Louisville Downtown, Louisville, Kentucky. The theme of this year’s event was Focus: Innovation! Infrastructure! Efficiency! The conference highlighted the latest technologies and trends in the coatings world and showed practical applications. Leading the conference was two Technology Short Courses. In addition, tabletop exhibits held during the event featured displays of the most recent innovations in products and services offered to the industry. The conference consisted of eight separate tracks: polyurethanes, test methods, industrial coatings, novel technologies, end users, architectural coatings, rheology and titanium dioxide/pigments.

The conference commenced with a Keynote Address from
Rigoberto Advincula of CASE Western Reserve University, who
presented a talk entitled “Innovation Through Nanostructured
and Templated Coatings.” Smart coatings are developed
through intelligent design, material choices and control of film
formation. “The demand for high performance coatings and in-
novation in the industry necessitates new ways of harnessing
control all the way to the molecular level,” Advincula stated.
In his talk he addressed approaches towards smart coatings
through nanostructuring and templating ultrathin films and
coatings, enabling new functionality from several design princi-
ples that can be applicable to commercial coatings. “These coat-
ings include superhydrophobic coatings, anti-bacterail coatings,
oil-water separation and sensors,” he added. “The Advincula
Research Group through the years have focused on a bottom-
up approach in the design of new coating materials that utilize
innovative chemistry and surface characterization tools.”
Highlights of this event included The Technical Focus
Lecture, Mattiello Lecture and Mattiello Symposium.

The Technical Focus Lecture, “Graphene Functional
Properties and Their Application in Resins, Plastics and
Elastomers,” was presented by Greg Smith of Cabot Corp.
His lecture included examples of how graphenes can be
utilized in coatings applications to deliver mechanical rein-
forcement, electrical, thermal and other functional proper-
ties. Graphene technologies were discussed generally, aspects
of post-processing graphenes materials and toxicology of
these materials was also discussed.
The Mattiello Lecture, “Solid State Lighting and its Impact
on the Marketing and Production of Decorative Coatings,” was
presented by Danny Rich of Sun Chemical Corporation. Solid
state lighting in the form of light emitting diode lamps (LED)
is quickly taking over as replacements for existing lower effi-
ciency lamps. Current lighting standard, which phased in from
2012-2014, do not ban incandescent or any specific lamp type,
but they do require that lamps need to use approximately 25
percent less energy.
“Many commercial lamps meet these new standards, in-
cluding halogen, incandescent filament, CFLs and LEDs,” said
Rich. “The new bulbs provide a wide range of choices in color
and brightness, and many of them last much longer than tra-
ditional lamps.”
One problem Rich identified with these new bulbs is that the
spectral distribution of flux from some of these new lamps do
not match or even correspond to the spectral power distribution
of traditional office and home lighting. Rich’s talk focused on
the impact of the new lamp lights on the design, marketing and
production of modern decorative coatings.

“The decorative coatings industry has followed recommend guidelines for many decades, producing color matches that are acceptable under a series of standard illuminants that are representative of the lamp lights in most common facilities,” said Rich. “The new solid state lamps do no render object colors in ways similar to the currently adopted standard illuminants.