Development of combinatorial chemistry methods for coatings: high-throughput screening of abrasion resistance of coatings libraries.

Design, validation, and implementation of an optical spectroscopic system for high-throughput analysis of combinatorially developed protective organic coatings are reported. Our approach replaces labor-intensive coating evaluation steps with an automated system that rapidly analyzes 8 × 6 arrays of coating elements that are discretely deposited on a single plastic substrate. Each coating element of the library is 10 mm in diameter and 2−5 μm thick. Performance of coatings is evaluated with respect to their resistance to wear abrasion because this parameter is one of the primary considerations in end-use applications. Upon testing, the coating materials undergo changes that are impossible to quantitatively predict using existing knowledge. Coatings are abraded using industry-accepted abrasion test methods at a single or multiple abrasion conditions followed by the high-throughput analysis of abrasion-induced light scatter. The developed automated system is optimized for the analysis of diffusively scattere...