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New water-based industrial coating technology for environmental-friendly high reflective metallic coatings based on nano-coated sub-micron aluminium pigments (NANOREFLEX)

Final Report Summary - NANOREFLEX (New water-based industrial coating technology for environmental-friendly high reflective metallic coatings based on nano-coated sub-micron aluminium pigments)

The NANOREFLEX project aimed to develop a novel water-based industrial coating technology for the production of environmentally friendly, highly reflective metallic coatings, which were based on nano-coated sub-micron aluminium pigments. More specifically, the project had the following objectives:

1. the development of innovative high quality, highly reflective aluminium pigments with an organic substance free surface
2. the identification of a suitable transparent nano-coating process to protect the pigments against corrosion in the water-based coating system, while sustaining their optical quality and achieving the necessary surface functionality
3. the creation of a specially adapted binder matrix corresponding to both pigment and substrate properties
4. the development of a coating formulation that would combine the pigments and the binder matrix to guarantee the designed microscopic floating and orientation behaviour as well as the desired macroscopic and coating film material properties
5. the identification of the properties that had to be achieved by the designed coating
6. the definition of relevant industrial application and processing parameters to be fulfilled by the proposed coating
7. the evaluation of the properties that were demonstrated by the developed technology and
8. the assessment of the proposal's industrial feasibility, the identification of necessary changes in equipment and machinery to allow for practical applications and the quantification of the required investments.

However, no suitable bonding agent matrix was developed. This resulted in the lack of lacquer formulation, therefore no coating was formulated and the objectives four to eight were not achieved. The identification of a suitable matrix was planned to be further examined during future research initiatives. The attempts to reach directed inflection through alternative strategies that appeared promising during the intermediate project stages also failed; hence NANOREFLEX was terminated without having fulfilled its scope of works. Nevertheless, in terms of the development of a sub-micron pigment coating technology the project was successful and achieved promising results. As such, dissemination activities were partial and concerned only the developed aluminium pigment.