Dr Ray Fernando, Arthur C Edwards Chair in Coatings Technology and Ecology at California State Polytechnic University, received the Mattiello Lecture Award on the last day of the American Coatings Conference 2018.
The Joseph J Mattiello Lecture was designed to recognise an individual who has made outstanding contributions to science, technology, and engineering related to the coatings industry.
Dr Fernando’s Mattiello Lecture was titled, ’Rheological and Colloidal Aspects of Latex- Associative Thickener Formulations: Overcoming the Remaining Challenges’.
In his address, Dr Fernando explained that waterborne latex paints are complex colloidal systems that present major challenges against establishing universal governing mechanisms of their stability and rheology.
The complexities emanate from the wide variability of ingredients that make up the dispersed phase (latex, pigments, and fillers), as well as the continuous aqueous phase (thickeners, surfactants, dispersants, other additives, and electrolytes) of fully-formulated paints.
A uniformly mixed latex paint that comes off a mixing vessel, once poured into a container and stored, can undergo many changes such as flocculation, aggregation, sedimentation, and syneresis.
Over the last four decades, associative thickeners have enhanced the formulating latitude towards circumventing some of these problems.
However, a thorough understanding of these thickeners’ multicomponent interactions and their sensitivities to variables in fully-formulated coatings is still lacking.
In his lecture, Dr Fernando provided an overview of the current level of knowledge on the subject matter, as well as an outline of what remains to be done to fill the existing knowledge gaps.
