Plastics with smooth, decorative surfaces have a high quality look and meet demands for greater individuality. Be it a comfortable auto interior, futuristic building facade or sleek tablet PC or laptop, products of this kind are wildly popular among consumers. Polyurethane coatings provide an attractive exterior, but also protection for the frequently damage-prone plastic surfaces underneath. But even the most beautiful finish suffers when a coating gets dirty or covered with graffiti. Customer requests therefore are on the rise for coated surfaces that can be cleaned quickly, simply and environmentally compatible.

The solution is easy-to-clean coatings based on waterborne polyurethane dispersions from Bayer MaterialScience. Dirt and graffiti adhere poorly to them and can easily be removed using common cleaning agents. At the K 2013 plastics trade fair, Bayer MaterialScience is premiering easy-to-clean coatings based on raw materials from the Bayhydrol UV range. Their content of volatile organic compounds (VOC) is very low. The coatings can be cured with UV radiation in a matter of minutes, offering clear advantages in terms of productivity. Furthermore, thanks to strong crosslinking of the molecules, the coatings are very long-lasting and chemical-resistant.

“They protect coated products and extend their service life, which helps to conserve resources,” said Maria Almató Guiteras, Head of Applications Development for General Industrial Coatings. “In other words, the coatings contribute to greater sustainability in not just one, but several ways.”
A Coating Goes for Hardness Testing

At Stand A 75 in Hall 6, Bayer MaterialScience is showcasing Makrolon® polycarbonate sheets treated with a UV-curable clearcoat system based on the raw materials described. The sheets have already had to submit to several tests: “We naturally soiled the coatings with particularly stubborn, high-adhesion paints,” explained Thomas Feller, laboratory manager in the field of plastics coatings at Bayer MaterialScience. “Even after ten cleaning cycles, we still could easily remove the unwanted paint. And we did not detect any deterioration at all in the easy-to-clean coating.”

Bayer MaterialScience further offers a solution for waterborne two-component polyurethane coatings formulated with raw materials from the Bayhydur  line and Bayhydrol A 2695. These coatings are similarly characterized by a low VOC content and result in high-quality coating films.