PTFE
PTFE and it’s variants have become a solution to many problems associated with modern manufacturing and materials handling, such areas benefiting from the material are; food processing and packaging, chemical protection and as a dry lubricant in place of oils. Other specialist chemical companies have expanded the technology and developed the business, thus offering almost unlimited opportunities within the range of PTFE coatings.
PTFE is extraordinarily resistant to chemical attack, and the surface free energy of solid PTFE is very low. This means that liquids do not readily wet the solid, and other solids do not adhere strongly. These properties render PTFE very valuable for forming protective surface coatings, in a wide range of applications from non-stick cookware to surgical sutures. However, the very properties which make PTFE so useful in such applications also make it very difficult to form PTFE coatings which are sufficiently adherent to their substrates.
PTFE coatings, Teflon® and Xylan® have gained reputations for their non-stick properties, however, in modern day life the material has been put to many other uses, including uses in aviation, electronics, telecommunications, automobiles and trucks, as well as pollution control and renewable energy projects.
Industrial coatings are aqueous based and are milky white dispersions of PTFE particles in water, stabilized by wetting agents. They can be further formulated to meet specific needs by adding other solid or liquid ingredients and pigments. These aqueous dispersions offer a practical method for coating or impregnating using a resin that does not respond to traditional solvent or melt-processing techniques.
Using new polymer technology and a cleaner, more effective new wetting agent, current PTFE products introduce a new generation of high-performance PTFE coating products.