BASF Coatings AG, Muenster, Germany

Horst Hintze-Bruening, Anne-Lise Troutier, Fabrice Leroux

The impact resistance of automotive coatings can be enhanced using a polymer composite comprising layered inorganic nanoparticles as a coating layer.

Limiting the extend of coatings delamination upon stone chipping is becoming crucial within modern automotive coatings bearing reduced numbers of layers or layer thicknesses. Energy dissipation has to be translated into reinforcement and toughening of the material, limitation of crack growth and direction of failure mode to sacrificing loci.

Highly filled composites applied as primer layers normally can not address all those energy dissipation modes due to their morphology on the µ-scale.

We show that specific interactions of layered inorganic nanoparticles with the polymer matrix components improve the impact resistance of coating systems comprising such nanocomposites. Energy dissipating structures are presented like dispersed intercalated / exfoliated platelets, “springs” comprising sandwiched inorganic stacks and soft polymer layers as well as morphologies on different length scales resulting from particle controlled spinodal polymer demixing.

We anticipate our findings will trigger further developments of composites using layered nanoparticles and application affected coating resins.

Dr. Horst Hintze-Bruening - Short CV
78-84       studies in chemistry
84-87       doctoral thesis "Mechanistic Studies on Thermal and Catalytic
Hydrogen Transfer Reactions"
87-present  BASF Coatings AG, Muenster (current position: head of research lab "colloidal systems")