GCEP Progress Report for Advanced Transportation Transportation Vehicle Light-Weighting with Polymeric Glazing and Mouldings Investigators

Polymeric glazing and mouldings are an extremely high “want” from the transportation community, enabling more creative designs as well as improved part consolidation。 However, plastic windows and mouldings must have high-performance and low-cost protective coating systems with lifetimes in excess of 10 years. Current polymeric glazings do not meet durability/performance requirements for near-term implementation. Our project targets new coating system manufacturing to address durability and cost issues necessary to meet or exceed transportation engineering requirements. Atmospheric plasma deposition (APD) is an emerging technique that enables plasma deposition of coatings on large and/or complex geometry substrates in ambient air without the need for expensive vacuum or inert manufacturing platforms. It is an environmentally friendly and solventfree technique, minimizing chemical waste throughout the process as well as greenhouse gas emissions when compared to current wet chemistry aqueous sol-gel manufacturing techniques. Low deposition temperatures (<50°C) allows the deposition on plastic and organic substrates. Using our state-of-the-art APD coating capabilities, we have demonstrated the ability to deposit highly transparent bilayer organosilicate coatings with superior combinations of elastic modulus and adhesion compared to commercial sol-gel coatings. The bilayer is deposited on large substrates by atmospheric plasma, in ambient air, at room temperature, in a one-step process, using a single inexpensive precursor. The significantly improved elastic modulus translates into improved durability and resistance to scratching and environmental degradation. The method overcomes the challenge of fabricating coatings with both high mechanical and interfacial properties in a one-step process – this would generally require at least a three-step process that includes a surface preparation step, and two coating operations. In APD, the surface is functionalized simultaneously as the first layer is deposited, thereby reducing the total number of processing steps. In this way, we can deposit a tough carbon-bridged hybrid silica layer with excellent adhesion to plastics followed by the deposition of a top layer formed of a dense silica with high elastic modulus, hardness and scratch resistance. The bilayer structure exhibited a remarkable ~100% visible transmittance, twice the adhesion energy and three times the elastic modulus of commercial polysiloxane sol-gel coatings currently in use today for aerospace applications. For making these plasma deposited mechanically robust protective coating multifunctional, functional nanoparticles are successfully incorporated into these plasma deposited organosilicate matrix for making nanocomposites. Silica nanocomposites and ceria nanocomposites are demonstrated here as examples. Introduction and Background Polymeric glazing and mouldings are an extremely high “want” for the transportation community. They enable more creative design and improve part consolidation. Polymeric glazing and mouldings are inherently lightweight materials that may find exciting opportunities in the transportation industry as a means of increasing fuel efficiency. With 75% of fuel consumption relating directly to vehicle weight, potential weight reductions that result in an improved priceperformance ratio promotes the use of lightweight materials [1]. Generally, polymeric glazing and mouldings can reduce weight by as much as 15 kgs per vehicle for glazing alone. Considering both the mature U.S. market and the emerging Chinese market, there is the potential for staggering reductions in vehicle weights, totalling 195 million kg and 450 million kg for the U.S. and China respectively. Globally, this figure sores above 1 billion kg in possible weight reduction. One of the key plastics used in automotive sector is polycarbonate (PC). PC has dominated the market for vehicle headlamp covers for 15 years, and now it challenges glass in windows. Plastics are lightweight materials ideal to improve fuel efficiency and design flexibility without compromising on performance or safety. Polymeric moulding processes enable glazings to be formed into shapes that are not feasible with conventional glass forming processes. This technology is therefore seen as one of the key enablers for future design leadership and is currently unavailable due to performance shortcomings. (Fig. 1) (a) (b) Fig.1: (a) The concept car designed and manufactured by polymeric glazing and mouldings, (b) The side window fabricated by PC on Volkswagen hybrid concept car XL1[1]. Transparent and high-performance coatings on plastic substrates offer the possibility of significant light-weighting and improved aerodynamic design for transportation vehicles. For example, weight reduction together with significant lowering of vehicle center-of-mass can be achieved by replacing automobile glass with plastic (poly-methyl methacrylate (PMMA), polycarbonate (PC) or polyvinyl) windows. Low-cost, light weight and recyclable reinforced organic mouldings can also be used to replace metallic mouldings and improve the aerodynamic design envelope. However, the use of plastic windows and mouldings must have high-performance and low-cost protective coating systems with lifetimes in excess of 10 years. Current polymeric glazings do not meet durability/performance requirements for near-term implementation. For example, current commercial sol-gel based polysiloxane coatings for plastic windows in commercial aerospace systems do not have the desired combination of low-cost processing, weather and scratch resistance, along with long-term durability in terrestrial environments. Our project will target new coating system manufacturing to address durability and cost issues necessary to meet or exceed transportation engineering requirements. An experimental approach based on fundamental chemistry exploits innovative deposition and coating technologies with detailed surface analytical measurements and targeted physical testing. Atmospheric plasma deposition is an emerging technique that enables plasma deposition of coatings on large and/or complex geometry substrates in ambient air without the need for expensive vacuum or inert manufacturing platforms. It is an environmental friendly technique with the advantage of minimal chemical waste throughout the process and is solvent-free with the potential for zero greenhouse gas emissions compared to current wet chemistry aqueous sol-gel manufacturing techniques. Low deposition temperatures (<50°C) allows the deposition on plastic and organic substrates.