Good to touch - and it's permanent! New processes for the production of improved soft-feel coatings

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Good to touch - and it's permanent! New processes for the production of improved soft-feel coatings

Irle, Christoph / Mechtel, Markus

There has been an increasing trend in the automotive industry in recent years towards designing car interiors with soft, high-quality surfaces that are also pleasing to touch. To achieve these characteristics, use is made of low-emission, water-borne soft-feel coatings. The very latest generation of these coating systems also complies with the strictest specifications regarding resistance to hydrolysis, yellowing and chemicals. Water-borne soft-feel coatings are based on an OH-functional dispersion, which is usually a polyurethane dispersion crosslinked with an aliphatic polyisocyanate. If ease of application is important, the use of water-dispersible polyisocyanates is recommended, although low-viscosity water-repellent polyisocyanates also frequently meet the requirements. Soft-feel coatings are touched and therefore come into contact with hand creams and sun lotions. These attack the plastic, make it soft and reduce the adhesion beween it and the coating. To avoid this, it is first of all advisable to apply a two-coat system consisting of a primer and a softfeel coating. It should also be borne in mind that different plastics have different resistance to the damaging influences of such cosmetics. Polycarbonate, for example, is superior to ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene copolymer) in this respect. In order to comply with the strict specifications of the automotive industry, the coating raw materials and the formulations of the two-component polyurethane coatings must be further optimised.