Radical Change in Research and Development – The Shift from Conventional Methods to High Throughput Methods

By Dean C. Webster

Paint and coating formulations are incredibly complex mixtures of a large number of ingredients. Even a simple clear coating or varnish formulation can consist of one or more resins and crosslinkers, solvents, curing catalysts, flow and leveling additives, gloss modifiers, stabilizers, and so on. Pigmented coatings require these same ingredients and, in addition, usually consist of several pigments and their dispersants and dispersion stabilizers.

Coatings must also meet a combination of performance requirements. All coatings have numerous requirements for appearance ( color, gloss, texture), mechanical properties (hardness, flexibility, adhesion), durability ( corrosion, weathering), and application (viscosity). The coating formulator is therefore challenged to use whatever information she can find to help her decide what ingredients to use, and also in what ratios to mix the ingredients in order to achieve the optimum in performance properties.

With all of the technical advances occurring in the world today, the process of formulating new coating products has largely remained un­changed. Some key improvements have been made in that the formulator now has access to computer software that can retrieve raw materials from a database and allow the formulator to experiment with various ratios of in­gredients before committing to making and testing a formulation. Statistical experimental design, or design of experiments (DOE), has also become available in the past 20 years or so. However, statistical experimental design has not yet become standard practice for coatings formulators.