On June 1st, during the Surfair conference on "Innovative surface treatments facing environmental challenges", PPG-Aerospace was awarded (Award for Technique) for its research and developments in the electrodeposition of a REACh's compliant anaphoretic paint. This project is part of Clean Sky Eco-design ITD and represents a breakthrough concept towards environmentally friendly surface treatments.
This concept offers many advantages. Among them: it does not need the use of any anodising pre-treatment. It is a fully automated process with at least 95% of transfer efficiency. High quality consistency can be achieved as well as high corrosion protection, significantly above the existing specifications.
PPG Aerospace and its partner Ecole Nationale Superieure de Chimie de Lille-UMET have been actively working on the characterization of the oxide layer that is formed concomitant to the paint electrodeposition process which plays a significant role in the final properties of the e-coated parts. In parallel to conventional methods like FEG-SEM (Field-Emission Gun Scanning Electron Microscope) and TEM (Transmission Electron Microscopy) which require complex and highly time consuming samples preparation, PPG-Aerospace has developed a new technique based on ToF-SIMS (Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry) which allow a quick and reliable determination of the thickness of that oxide layer. This is now very helpful to prepare the industrialisation of that technology. 

For further information, contact Didier Labouche project coordinator at PPG Coatings