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Compared to traditional solvent-based coatings, water-based coatings offer advantages such as lower price, safer use, resource and energy savings, and reduced environmental pollution, making them a major direction for the current development of the coatings industry. Water-based acrylic resin coatings are the fastest-growing and most diverse type of pollution-free water-based coating.
Water-based acrylic resins include acrylic resin emulsions, acrylic resin aqueous dispersions (also known as water-dilutable acrylics), and acrylic resin aqueous solutions. Emulsions are mainly synthesized by emulsifying oily olefin monomers in water under the initiation of a water-based free radical initiator, while resin aqueous dispersions are synthesized through different processes such as free radical solution polymerization or stepwise solution polymerization. In terms of particle size: emulsion particle size > resin aqueous dispersion particle size > aqueous solution particle size. From an application perspective, the former two are the most important.
Acrylic emulsions are mainly used as a base material for latex paints and have an important application in the architectural coatings market, with their application continuing to expand. In recent years, the development and application of acrylic resin aqueous dispersions have attracted increasing attention, and their application in industrial and consumer coatings is constantly expanding. Based on monomer composition, acrylic emulsions are generally classified into pure acrylic emulsions, styrene-acrylic emulsions, vinyl acetate-acrylic emulsions, silicone-acrylic emulsions, tert-vinyl carbonate (tert-vinyl acetate) emulsions, and tert-acrylate (tert-acrylate) emulsions.
Waterborne acrylic paints can be divided into two main categories: water-dispersible and water-soluble. The former uses water-based latex or water-soluble colloids as a matrix. Water-soluble acrylic paints are made from copolymer resins with active crosslinking functional groups and are mostly thermosetting paints. During paint preparation, crosslinking resins are added or not added, allowing the active functional groups to crosslink during film formation to create a three-dimensional paint film structure. Developing waterborne acrylic paints can replace most of the volatile organic solvents with water while maintaining the various unique properties of acrylic paints, thereby significantly reducing air pollution.
Water-soluble acrylic resins are mostly anionic. In copolymer resins, appropriate amounts of unsaturated carboxylic acids, such as acrylic acid, methacrylic acid, maleic anhydride, and methylene succinic acid, are selected in the monomers to introduce carboxyl groups onto the side chains. These carboxyl groups are then neutralized with organic amines or ammonia to form salts, thus achieving water solubility. Furthermore, the water solubility of the resin can be increased by selecting appropriate monomers to introduce hydrophilic groups such as -OH hydroxyl groups, -CONH2 amide groups, or -O-ether bonds onto the resin side chains. Neutralized acrylic resins are soluble in water, but their water solubility is not very strong, often forming emulsions or highly viscous solutions. Therefore, a certain proportion of hydrophilic co-solvents must be added to water-soluble resins to increase their water solubility.