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Paints & Coating
Paints and Coating

3M™ Glass Bubbles find applications in Paints. While they offer improved scrubbability, burnish and stain resistance for architectural paints, 3M™ Glass Bubbles provide gloss control, hardness, corrosion resistance, abrasion resistance and higher solids / reduced VOCs for industrial & maintenance paints.

3M™ Glass Bubbles are hollow glass micro spheres with a high strength to density ratio. Lightweight but endowed with sufficient strength for processing survival, 3M™ Glass Bubbles facilitate potential enhancements like high filler loading, reduced warping / shrinkage, sandability and more.
  • Lower viscosity and improved flow - Unlike many irregularly shaped fillers, 3M Glass microspheres roll easily over one another, similar to ball bearings. This contributes to lower viscosity, better flow, and improved sprayability.
  • Higher filler loading to reduce costs - With the lowest surface area to volume ratio of any shape, 3M glass microspheres reduce resin demand and increase volume loading capacity. Smaller spheres may fill voids between larger ones to enhance packing for higher solids/lower VOCs, and reduced costs.
  • Gloss control - Many gloss control materials can increase viscosity. But increasingly higher levels of 3M glass microspheres can help incrementally lower gloss without significantly increasing viscosity in many applications.
  • Barrier effect - Tight particle packing, combined with hardness and inertness, creates a durable, low-permeation film barrier against weather, corrosion and chemicals.

Contamination, surface defects and hard-to-wet surfaces cause all manner of problems in paints and coatings. Unsightly orange peel, craters, fish eyes and picture framing effects are just some of the problems that formulators face. Surfactants overcome these defects by decreasing the coating’s surface tension to ensure better leveling, wetting and spreading - especially on unclean surfaces. The lower the surface tension, the more effectively a coating wets, levels and spreads.
3M™ Novec™ Fluorosurfactants – the new generation fluorosurfactants provide significant benefits.
  • Dramatically lower surface tension
  • Help paints and coatings overcome surface contamination
  • Effective in both aqueous and solvent-based systems
What’s more, Novec™ fluorosurfactants help to maintain low surface tension throughout the entire drying process. This helps to create smoother, higher gloss coatings. You can use Novec™ fluorosurfactants in many industrial and commercial coatings, including paints, resins, adhesives, inks, clearcoats, floor coverings and more.

3M™ Novec™ Fluorosurfactants can reduce dynamic surface tensions to lower levels than conventional fluorosurfactants (PFOS and telomer derived) and those achievable with hydrocarbon and silicone surfactants. In addition, Novec™ fluorosurfactants can reduce surface tensions more efficiently. That means you need less surfactant to do the same job.
Applications
  • Architectural, Industrial & Maintenance paints
  • Resins & Adhesives
  • Inks & Clear coats
  • Floor Coverings
  • Automotive Primers
  • Decorative Paints
  • UV Curing Lacquers

3M Products for the Paints & Coating Industry

Glass Bubbles Novec™ Fluorosurfactants