Scott Gaboury

Acrylic-fluoropolymer mixtures and their use in coatings

Fluoropolymer coatings, particularly those based on polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) resins, have a 35 year history of outstanding performance in outdoor applications. However, the chemical inertness of PVDF presents challenges to the paint formulator in that it prevents adhesion to substrates and makes it difficult to disperse pigments. To overcome these difficulties, an acrylic modifier resin is usually added to the PVDF resin. The acrylic modifier is traditionally physically blended with the PVDF resin to improve coating adhesion and enhance pigment dispersion. The physical blending results in a PVDF/acrylic mixture on a macro-molecular scale. ATOFINA Chemicals, Inc. has developed a novel approach to mix the fluoropolymer and acrylic on micro-molecular scale. Because of this intimate mixing, and the wide latitude of the acrylic and fluoropolymer monomers that can be utilized, a wide range of unique properties can be achieved in solvent-base dispersion coatings, and water-borne coatings. The unique properties of the solvent-base and water-borne coatings are discussed in this paper.