E (Ellard) Hooiveld, MSc

In my PhD research I am developping new paints and coatings that dry in different layers. For many applications like cars, airplanes and boats, many different layers of coatings/paints need to be added on top of each other to provide the metal substrate with all the needed qualities. These processes take a lot of time and besides can be bad for the environment.

By combining different paints/coatings in one pot we are able to get the different layers in one go. We need to tune the particle size of the different coatings or paints in the appropiate range to get so called stratfication. In this stratification process the small paint particles with one quality will accumalte at the fornt of drying paint layer and the bigger paint particles with another quality will accumulate at the bottum. In this way we can easely create a final paint layer with two different qualities top to bottum.

Challenges in this project are:

• Find correct paint/coating particles that offer the correct qualities to the paint and allow for stratification.
• Determine the influence on the stratification by of different parameters like: particles size, evaporation speed, total film thickness.
• Combine experiemental results with computer simulations of drying particle suspensions
• Find strategies to develop multiple layers by adding even more different particle sizes to the particles suspension
• Find the influence of anisotropical particles ( rod-like particles, cubic like particles or  2d flat particles) 

If you like to know more about my project, or you are intrested in collaboration or doing a bachelor or master thesis do not hesitate to contact me: ellard.hooiveld@wur.nl