Silicone elastomers are materials with good thermal and oxidation stability, flexibility, hydrophobicity, and low surface energy. Due to these properties, they find use in broad range of applications in electronic, medical, automobile, aerospace and many other industrial fields. In this work, focus will be paid to the use of silicone elastomers as protective coatings. In general, a protective coating must have excellent mechanical properties and stability to ensure long life-time and efficiency of the involved products. The mechanical properties of silicone elastomers are commonly improved by addition of fillers or by chemical modifications. Nevertheless, these modifications often comes together with deterioration of some of the favorable properties.<br/>In this study, we investigate how silicone elastomers network structure can influence the mechanical properties. Apart from the mechanical properties, focus is also paid to the stability of the different network structures over time. Targeting protective coatings as the main application, we chose to work with condensation curing silicone elastomers, which benefits from room temperature curing. By following the development of the mechanical properties of different condensation curing silicone elastomer coatings over time, we found that the type and the concentration of the cross-linker significantly influence not only the silicone network structure, but also the coating stability. By analyzing the extract from the coatings, possible reasons behind the coating instability are resolved. The understanding of different factors, which can potentially influence the stability of the coatings, led to a proposal of new system for fast curable and stable silicone elastomer coatings with tailorable mechanical properties (Figure1).

Challenges in the development of reliable silicone elastomer coatings

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.