According to official industry surveys, the market for special paints in the automotive and machine building industries will increase to US$ 12.1 billion by 2007. This is why manufacturers of special paints go to considerable lengths to enhance the characteristics of their paints both in terms of innovation and economics in order to provide greater benefits for their customers. And the most recent example of this is the use of nano-sized diamonds in automotive paints.
Diamond's unique physical and chemical properties make it ideal for this application. Not only does it possess the greatest hardness of all known materials, its almost unsurpassed chemical resistance to all aggressive media such as acids and alkaline solutions, the highest thermal conductivity and its biological tolerability also play an essential part.
The nano-sized diamond is formed by introducing highly explosive materials into autoclaves at high temperatures (4,000°C) and pressures (100,000 bar).
Tests with a well-known paint manufacturer have shown that with the use of prototype paints containing diamond, improvements are achieved not just in resistance to impacts and scratches due to the increase in micro-hardness, but also clear advantages are obtained compared with conventional paints in terms of adherence to the ground, chemical resistance (particularly resistance to solvents), tribological friction values and the anti-adherence effect of hydrophobic coatings (easy to clean), and thermal conductivity.
With mechanical effects such as impacts, friction, scratching, etc, matt paints, for example, tend to form 'shiny spots'. With the use of paint formulations with nano-scale diamond these undesirable 'polishes' are reduced by more than 100% so that a matt finish can be guaranteed over a long period.
Download the full Car Paint Case Study (PDF 100KB)
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