Park JM  Kim SY  An SK  Lee YH  Kim HD

Vol. 23,  No. 2, pp. 148-157, Jun.  2017
10.7464/ksct.2017.23.2.148

UV-curable polyurethane-acrylate Coatings Antifouling Crosslinkable trimethylolpropane and pentaerythritol triacrylate

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To prepare UV-curable polyurethane-acrylate oligomer, NCO-terminated urethane prepolymers with trimethylolpropane, [TMP; 0 (0), 0.1 (0.021) and 0.2 (0.043) mole (mole fraction)] as crosslinkable tri-functional chain extender were end-capped with pentaerythritol triacrylate [PETA; 2.0 (0.400), 1.7 (0.354) and 1.4 (0.304) mole (mole fraction)] with one hydroxyl group/three vinyl functionalities. The stable as-formulated UV-curable polyurethane-acrylates [stable mixtures of PETA-capped oligomer/ reactive acrylic monomer diluents without/with heptadecafluorodecyl methacrylate (PFA; 0, 6 and 9 wt%)] were formed up to 0.2 (0.043) mole (mole fraction) of TMP content in the prepolymer, while homogeneous-mixing failed at 0.3 (0.068) mole (mole fraction), in which the crosslink density in NCO-terminated urethane prepolymer was too high to enable the formation of stable mixture. This study examined the effect of TMP/PETA molar ratio and heptadecafluorodecyl methacrylate (PFA) content (wt%) on the properties of UV-cured polyurethane-acrylates as marine antifouling coating materials. The properties of UV-cured polyurethane-acrylate were found to be significantly dependent on the crosslinkable TMP/PETA ratio and PFA content. With the increasing of the TMP and PFA contents, the contact angles increased, and consequently the surface tension decreased. The adhesion of algae/barnacles to PFA contained film samples were found to be sufficiently weak to allow their easy removal. These results suggest that the UV-cured samples containing PFA have strong potential as coating materials for antifouling applications.