Film formation of latex in dry coating films

Abstract: The objective of this master thesis was to investigate the possibility to measure the gain in stiffness of the dry coating due to film formation of latex with a Dynamic Mechanic Thermal Analyzer (DMTA). This could tell when and to which extent the latex forms a film after the drying process. Two latices with different Tg was used for the experiments, one with a Tg of 36°C, denoted hard, and the one with a Tg of 8°C, denoted soft. The hard latex was used to make coating samples that would not form a film when dried at room temperature and the soft latex was used as a reference to the coating with hard latex since it would form a film at room temperature. It was shown that a gain in stiffness due to film formation of latex in coating can be measured with a DMTA. It was also shown that that the film forming of latex in coatings depend on time, temperature and the history of the sample. Further investigations were carried out to try to determine the time for film formation to be completed at a certain temperature.. These investigations showed that this type of trials cannot be carried out in a DMTA directly since the stiffness seemed to increase monotonically during a very ling time. This might be due to the rearrangements in the pigment structure that might affect the gain in stiffness. Therefore, a method involving oven curing was developed. Only one series of test were performed with this method due to lack of time but the method showed promising results.