Radiation Curable Coatings

Coatings World:  Can you describe the basic technology behind radiation curable coatings?

Mike Idacavage: The technology behind radiation curable coatings can be thought of as changing the way a coating is cured. In radiation curable coatings, UV energy, visible light, or low energy electrons (EB) are used to form a coating, film or ink as opposed to thermal, evaporative, or oxidative (air-dry) cure. Another way to think of this technology when it comes to coatings is that we are now using light instead of heat (ovens) to solidify the liquid coatings formulations to the desired solid coatings required for many applications. Of course, to make this happen there are some necessary changes that has to be made in the coatings formulations such as the addition of photoinitiators to react with the light and reactive resin materials that will then cure with the photoinitiators. However, the overall concept can be thought of as substituting light for heat in curing a coating.