I-Corps: Improved Coating Properties Using Janus Particle Additives

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project offers cost-effective, commercially scalable solutions to many long-standing challenges in the coating industry. The technology will help improve properties such as water resistance, adhesion, surface hardness, and film formation. The project is not limited to waterborne architectural coatings.

It may also be applied to other coating systems, including coatings for automobiles, inks for printing, cosmetics for personal care products, and functional coatings for medical appliances. The technology can potentially increase the performance and lifetime for coatings that play a critical role in protecting various surfaces from aging or deteriorating.

In addition, this effort represents a platform technology that offers a unique way to control surface properties, which may enable new designs for functional coatings, including self-cleaning and anti-bacterial coatings. The use of these new coatings may, in turn, reduce the pollution to the environment and reduce energy costs.

This I-Corps project is based on a new way of creating self-stratified coatings using amphiphilic Janus particles, where one side of the particle can resist water and the other side can be highly adhesive. Upon drying, Janus particles vigorously accumulate at the air-water interface with fast kinetics. Their hydrophobic sides orient towards the air to enhance the water-repellency while the hydrophilic sides sustain strong adhesion with the underlying layer.

This proposal explores the potential commercialization and market of such technology for creating water-resistant coatings and the broad applications of the newly developed self-stratification system. It provides potential improvements in surface properties by directly adding Janus particles without redesigning the original coating chemistries. The results will help guide future research directions of Janus particles and self-stratified coating materials.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.