Abstract
There are an increasing number of uses for surface coating on polymer substrates. Surface coatings provide ease of change of surface properties, decoration on specific parts of the polymer's surface, or the possibility of a uniform finish over a variety of substrate materials. These factors are found to be especially relevant to the packaging and automotive industries.
Many coatings materials are based on polymeric materials and sometimes difficulties arise when trying to marry them to polymer substrates of low surface energy and relatively inert molecular structure. Through the application of tailored coating formulation, substrate surface pretreatment and suitable coating process these problems may be eliminated to produce coated polymers with high bond strength properties.
It is the author and other's opinion that the principles of surface and interfacial science have hardly been developed for use in surface coating technology. This review paper discusses various aspects of the subject, with respect to the coating's formulations, substrate preparation and application techniques. Using a number of examples, it will be demonstrated that coating formulators, in particular, need to adopt the measurement of surface properties when developing new paint, lacquer or ink systems to ensure high quality coated polymers.
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