Radiation curing of hybrid polymer coatings

The curing of wet films is the essential step in coatings technology. Coatings are applied more and more on thermally-sensitive substrate materials, and the tendency to shorten production cycles is also permanently growing. For this reason, the use of radiation curing at ambient temperatures is also increasing in coatings technology in order to meet these requirements. In this paper, radiation curing of inorganic-organic hybrid polymer coating materials is described. The synthesis of suitable precursors, the preparation of the coating material via sol-gel processing, and the curing behaviour under the influence of radiation is described. In particular, the effect of ambient pressure plasma and UV radiation as curing techniques on hybrid polymer coating materials is discussed