Dual cure technology boosting performance of thermoformable coatings

 
Thermoformable coatings are currently used to manufacture a wide variety of structural and functional plastic parts including automotive body parts, consumer electronic devices and house hold appliances. The concept of thermoforming enables to replace the complex lacquering of 3D components by a simpler coating of flat substrates being shaped afterwards. A challenge in developing formable coatings is to achieve excellent surface properties after a high degree of stretching as this is generally achieved by a high crosslinking density of the coating. This obvious conflict can be solved by the curing being implemented in two steps, before and after the forming. In this presentation the development of a dual cure coating is described which can be cured both thermally and by UV. The coating shows excellent thermoformability after a thermal treatment step and is passing the most stringent automotive requirements after UV curing.