A laser photochemical process is introduced to realize superhydrophobic conducting carbon coatings with broccoli-type hierarchical morphology for use as a metal-free counter electrode in a dye sensitized solar cell. The process involves pulsed excimer laser irradiation of a thin layer of liquid haloaromatic organic solvent o-dichlorobenzene (DCB). The coating reflects a carbon nanoparticle-self...

Single crystals of the metal-organic framework Ulm-4l(arge) (MFU-4l) can be grown site selectively on microtextured plasma polymer coatings comprising a pattern of alternating hydrophilic and hydrophobic domains. The crystals grow preferentially on the hydrophilic parts of the film surface. X-ray diffraction (XRD) shows that the cubic crystals have a high propensity to adhere with 〈1 0 0〉 orien...

Contact: Dr. Charles F. Palmer Ethox Chemicals [email protected] T +1 864 277 1620 They are used in many industrial and architectural applications. The hydrophobic nature of the alkyd polymer makes them good choices when water repellency is important. However, formulating alkyds into low VOC (volatile organic compound) waterborne coatings results in a number of problems, which can be minimised ...

Approximately 100 billion aluminum cans are produced annually, mainly for the beverage industry. Early technologies for decorating the cans often used solvent-based coatings containing solvents at concentrations of -70% to 75% by volume (Randall 1992). The solvent composition was typically a mixture of aliphatic hydrocarbons, aromatics, ethers, cellosolves, and acetates. Unfortunately, this met...

High performance functional coatings, based on hybrid organic/inorganic materials, are being developed to combine the polymer flexibility and ease of processing with the mechanical properties and versatility of inorganic materials. By incorporating silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) in the polymeric matrices, it is possible to obtain hybrid polymer films with increased tensile strength and impact res...

With increasing interest in the development of new composite systems for a variety of applications which require easily processible materials and adequate structural properties with high energy densities, we have pursued the chemical functionalization of oxide passivated aluminum nanoparticles (nAl) using three acrylic monomers, 3‐(trimethoxysilyl)propyl methacrylate (MPS), 2‐carboxyethyl acryl...

A concept for prediction of organic coatings, based on the alternating hydrostatic pressure (AHP) accelerated tests, has been presented. An AHP accelerated test with different pressure values has been employed to evaluate coating degradation. And a back-propagation artificial neural network (BP-ANN) has been established to predict the service property and the service lifetime of coatings. The p...