A scalable process for the generation of durable easy-to-clean coatings on foils

The cleaning of decorative surfaces, e.g., on furniture or in automotive industry, is a time-consuming process with high maintenance costs that partly requires special cleaning chemicals as well as a laborious manual effort. To ease the cleaning process, easy-to-clean coatings are intensively discussed and an enormous demand of this surface functionalization in different fields of applications is forecasted by all industrial branches. Therefore, a novel and durable easy-to-clean coating based on a UV-curable clearcoat with incorporated SiO₂ particles and a thin functional polymer coating based on a zwitterionic phosphorylcholine was developed. The coating can be applied on PVC foils as well as PET foils and subsequently transferred to different decorative surfaces, e.g., via lamination or bonding. The developed three-step application process consists of a lacquering step with UV curing, a plasma surface modification, and the deposition of a thin functional polymer layer. It can be easily integrated in industrial printing or roll-to-roll processes, which are normally used for foil functionalization. With the presented coating, it is possible to remove oil impurities from the functionalized foil by pure water without the necessity of cleaning surfactants. Furthermore, the thermal, chemical, and mechanical durability of the coating will be discussed.