Wood is a favourite material used in many indoor and outdoor applications, because of its abundance, attractive appearance, and easy processing. Even though wood was and is a widely used material, one of its main disadvantages is the low resistance to humid environments, resulting in dimensional instability, deterioration of mechanical properties and high susceptibility to biological degradation. In this context, to preserve the wooden material and prolong its lifetime, different processes are used, including both modification of the internal wood structure or application of coatings able to act as protecting layer between the external environment and the wood substrate.
Wood coating is one of the most common method used for the wood protection. The formulations depend on their end use and the location (indoors or outdoors) and have to offer protection against environmental factors, have to stop the passage of water vapours and have to present adhesion to substrate and long-term resistance to surrounding environmental factors (Hill 2007, Pacheco et al. 2021). Recently, superhydrophobic bioinspired surfaces have attracted high scientific and industrial interest by exploring the superwetting phenomena from nature and by creating composite functional materials which are mimicking these biological structures and architectures that cause excellent functions and performance like water repellence, self-cleaning, antifouling, anti-icing, antimicrobial effect and so on (Zhang et al. 2025).
In this study, we will present the synthesis pathway and the related properties of the nanocomposite formulations involving hydrophobized silica nanoparticles and acrylic polymer used as matrix and stabilizing agent for these nanoparticles on the wood surface. While hydrophobic silica nanoparticles are known to enhance water repellency, their poor adhesion and susceptibility to leaching have limited their effectiveness. Here we overcome this limitation by adding an acrylic polymer to embed the nanoparticles and form an interpenetrating network that physically immobilizes nanoparticles in a transparent film with increased resistance and mechanical durability.
Keywords: wood coating, nanocomposite formulation, superhydrophobic surface
Authors
Carmen-Mihaela Popescu
School of Computing Engineering and the Built Environment, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Petru Poni Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of the Romanian Academy
Dongyang Sun
School of Computing Engineering and the Built Environment, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Anamaria Irimia
Petru Poni Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of the Romanian Academy
Maria-Cristina Popescu
Petru Poni Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of the Romanian Academy
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