Jun 13, 2007 | Article
Waterborne paints have a long and successful history in certain niche applications (see this month's editorial), but the twin issues of environmental legislation and the low cost of water as a...
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Apr 18, 2007 | Article
Not too long ago, coatings and their raw materials were produced by a limited range of long-established production methods. But in recent years new technologies have been studied and commercialised...
Apr 4, 2007 | Article
Coatings have traditionally been based on 'random' polymers, varying statistically in their molecular weight, degree of branching, and in the case of copolymers, the ratio between the different...
Feb 21, 2007 | Article
Global coating and ink markets are in an innovative mood. The innovations are driven by environment, health, safety, quality improvement and cost reduction. Especially the regulations with respect...
Jan 24, 2007 | Article
Parts 1 and 2 of this series dealt with the chemistries of photoinitiators and formulations of UV cured systems containing such photoinitiators. Part 3 deals with some of the new products which are...
Jan 17, 2007 | Article
Our main reasons for applying surface coatings are to protect substrates under a range of different circumstances and/or to change their appearance. But in a number of markets, 'tactile' coatings...
Dec 27, 2006 | Article
We spend our lives surrounded by (and carrying with us internally and on our skin) bacteria, fungi, algae viruses and other forms of microscopic life. Microbes comprise 80-90% of the Earth's total...
Nov 22, 2006 | Article
The vast majority of the commercially available UV coating systems are based on free radical curing systems. A minority employ ionic curing processes but these will be left for a later article. The...
Nov 1, 2006 | Article
DMSO-based formulations have been designed to substitute methylene-chloride based, classical strippers. Unexpected synergy effects have been obtained with ethers, giving efficiencies comparable to...
Sep 6, 2006 | Article
The second issue of this quarterly column highlights a number of conflicts in the way that HSE issues are interpreted. Some of this is all too familiar - as in the case of the REACH update - but...