Structurally colored waterborne and biobased coatings

Color in coatings is typically achieved with pigments of inorganic or organic nature. Many of these pigments can be non-degradable, heat-sensitive, reactive, very expensive or have a high carbon footprint. This research project is focused on replacing such pigments with more sustainable structural colored materials, as well as to develop new strategies to reach either multicolor(s) or plain white color. Structural color will be incorporated in waterborne biobased coatings using structural-colored cholesteric liquid crystals. For multicolored coatings, we aim to achieve structural color with dispersed microdroplets of liquid crystals within a polymeric binder. For structurally colored white coatings, we aim to develop multilayer coatings with a characteristic top layer of nanonetworks that will have multi-scattering ability over the entire visible wavelength range.

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