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Materials Science and Engineering, University of Michigan

  MSE / Research / Projects / Corrosion resistant coatings

Corrosion resistant coatings

Materials: Nanomaterials
Application: Nanotechnology Structural
Technique: Processing Characterization Synthesis

The objective of this project is to develop a new corrosion resistant coating based on silses-quioxane materials for aircraft applications. Aluminum alloys for aircraft bodies must be epoxy resin-coated to minimize environmental corrosion. Coating systems currently used in the aviation industry use chromium (VI) compounds as the active chemical to prevent corrosion. These chro-mium compounds are know to be tetrogenic therefore industry seeks to replace them with non-toxic materials. Because silsesquioxane systems can be assembled at nanometer length scales providing the opportunity to tailor global properties and nanometer length scales it is possible to create novel materials that could replace current systems in use for both primer and surface coating applications for aircraft fuselage and structural materials that are primarily aluminum but in the near future will be epoxy-resin/carbon fiber composites. This represents to technology and the approach of this project.

We have now developed low-viscosity epoxy resin systems that include use octaamino-OPS, (m-NH2PhSiO1.5)8 as the curing agent and a number of silsesquioxane epoxide systems can be used to make acetone soluble epoxy resin coating systems that can be applied by spray gun and that cure at room temperature and are more robust in many ways than current commercial mate-rials including adhesion, resistance to photodegradation, and hydrophobicity.


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