Enhanced coating performance by overcoming the dilemma between coalescent demand and coating performance

 
The coatings industry moves towards coatings with reduced coalescent demand yet increased performance. This brings challenges to the design of waterborne binders. To tackle these, multiphase polymers have been developed that combine hard and soft polymers. This technology is well established but suffers from the limitation that there is a direct link between the coalescent demand and the amount of hard polymer. Increasing the amount of hard polymer improves the chemical resistances and mechanical properties, but at expense of an increased coalescent demand. To break through this dilemma a new design of multiphase polymers is required. Here we will introduce novel morphology controlled binders that show an excellent balance between chemical resistances (IKEA R2 in clear and pigmented formulations) and mechanical performance at <80 g/l. These binders are easy to formulate and do not require crosslinking. The performance of these binders further enables the shift from solventborne to waterborne.