Combinatorial chemistry methods for coating development III. Development of a high throughput screening method for abrasion resistance: correlation with conventional methods and the effects of abrasion mechanism

Combinatorial chemistry has proven to be a valuable toot for the development of new compounds. In the pharmaceutical industry, where combinatorial chemistry began, the approach has been instrumental in the high-speed development of new drugs. Due to the overwhelming success of the combinatorial methodology in the pharmaceutical industry, it has been recently applied to materials development. We have developed a combinatorial factory capable of preparing and evaluating of the order of 100 organic clear coatings per day. One of the most challenging aspects of the creation of the combinatorial factory was the development of the high throughput screening (HTS) methods for determining the primary properties of interest such as optical clarity, abrasion resistance, adhesion, and weatherability. For each property, an entirely new method was developed that allowed for rapid measurement on very small samples. This paper describes, in detail, some of the results obtained during the development of an HTS method for abrasion resistance. In particular, this document illustrates the importance of understanding the mechanism of abrasion and its influence on the measurement of abrasion resistance. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.