Abstract

It is probably needless to mention that organic coatings are of paramount importance nowadays. Although the huge number of applications and their wide spread can suggest that organic coatings have now reached a level of maturity, they are still mysterious from a certain point of view. The behaviour of these systems is not completely understood yet, especially as regarding the relationships between the chemical formulation and the manufacturing/applications technologies on one side, and the final properties on the other side. In this scenario, durability is regarded the most crucial point and finding satisfying design solutions is not straightforward. Automotive and architecture are perhaps two of the most challenging areas where the durability is claimed at overcoming hurdles and satisfying increasing expectations. The first part of this research handled durability issues in these two fields. Novel strategies for attaining high performance organic coatings were explored. In order to validate the proposed strategies, the research has been carried out in collaboration with industrial partners operating in these areas, thus making it possible to produce and test real organic coatings. The second part of the investigation was aimed at exploring the corrosion protection capabilities of self-repairing organic coatings. The attention was specifically focused onto the preemptive healing polyurethane coatings and their barrier properties.