Study the factors affecting the performance of organic–inorganic hybrid coatings

In this article, a series of hybrid organic–inorganic coatings based on silica-epoxy composite resins were prepared with the sol-gel method by using γ-aminopropyl triethoxysilane as a coupling agent. Especially, the research emphasized on the factors that influenced on the properties of the prepared hybrid coatings. Firstly, epoxy resin was reacted with γ-aminopropyl triethoxysilane at a specific feeding molar ratio; subsequently, the asprepared sol–gel precursor was cohydrolyzed with tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) at various contents to afford chemical bondings to form silica networks and give a series of organic–inorganic hybrid coatings. They were loaded and cured on steel panels and characterized for FTIR, TGA, DSC, water contact angles (WCA), pencil hardness, surface & three-dimensional morphological studies, and potentiodynamic polarization tests. The surfaces of the hybrid coatings showed Sea-Island or Inverting Sea-Island morphologies at a certain relative content of two components, which made the coatings possess hydrophobic property. Due to the contribution of organic and inorganic components, the prepared hybrid coatings possess a lot of properties such as pencil hardness, thermotolerance, and corrosion resistance. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014, 131, 41010.