The coating process is a very old process, ~2000 years, and is unique in that it is still in increasing use and growing in importance, when the majority of old technologies are no longer in use. It is widely used and is still significantly growing because; there are many useful and creative products that can be made by coating a variety of functional layers on a substrate to produce new product with novel properties.
Application of the coating process technology has been used to produce a wide variety of product from the initial used of recording information by printing ink on a substrate (800 AD), to the wide variety of products current being produced. Some current major applications in current use are:
• Paints to protect houses, bridges, and automobiles from corrosion and degradation.
• Adhesives are applied to paper or plastic to produce labels and tapes for a variety of uses
• Glass windows are coated with a variety of materials to make them stronger and to control light penetration into the structure.
• Plastic food wrap has coated layers to reduce oxygen penetration and retain moisture for the product to retain its freshness.
• Photographic films for medical, industrial, graphic arts, and consumer use
• Optical and magnetic media for audio and visual data storage
• Printing plates; and glossy paper for magazines.
• Photoresist films to fabricate circuit boards
New applications that are expanding the impact of the coating process are:
• Photovoltaic solar cell panels made by continuous coating process
• Thin film batteries
• Radio Frequency Identification Devices,
• Printable electronics
• Smart Labels
• Light emitting diodes
There are several reasons for the growth in the coating process and the continued expansion of the application of the process. It is a versatile, flexible, high productivity, low cost process that can produce a wide variety of essential products. The available technology has been steadily increasing so that a wide variety of coating weights, quality levels, substrates and solvents can be produced. Also, there are a large number of coating methods that are available at reasonable cost so that most coating product concepts can be economically produced.
The growth of coating process applications has resulted in coating line vendors producing a variety of commercial coating lines that can economically produce small product volumes as well as large product volumes. Efficient low cost laboratory and pilot coaters are available for product development and producing market evaluation products. There is a large basic and applied technology base to assist in product and process development.
The result of these factors is that the coating process will continue to grow in importance and to develop novel product concepts.