A Comparison of UV Cured Wood Floor Finishes to Conventional 2K Coatings

摘要

Waterborne (WB) coatings have become a viable choice for the protection of wood floors. Compared to solventborne finishes, they offer advantages such as fast dry times, low VOC and odor and excellent durability. Amongst WB finishes, 3 categories exist :(1) Single component (1K), two component (2K) and Ultra-Violet Cure (UV). These 3 finish types have many common characteristics and a few large differences. While 1K products can meet most of the basic flooring performance requirements, they tend to offer the least durability and will not be included within the scope of this paper. The 2K and UV finishes are built on Polyurethane Dispersion (PUD) chemistry. These resins can be tailor made by the reaction of isocyanates with polyols followed by dispersion and chain extension in water. By varying the isocyanate and polyol type, PUDs can have a broad range of properties. In the case of UV PUDs, the production process is the same but with the inclusion of a reactive acrylate.