Hydrophobic coating compositions and articles coated with said compositions

Abstract

Hydrophobic coating compositions are provided as are processes to coat articles with the compositions. Extremely hydrophobic coatings are provided by the compositions. Durable, weatherable and scratch-resistant coatings are provided by compositions comprising a trifluoromethyl-containing component and a hardenable material. Weatherable coatings are also provided by compositions comprising a mobile non-volatile fluorinated component and a hardenable material. Processes are also provided for forming hydrophobic coatings on articles.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION [0001] The present application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 272,982, filed Oct. 17, 2002, and allowed on Apr. 1, 2004; which in turn is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 823,853, filed Mar. 30, 2001, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,495,624, issued Dec. 17, 2002; which in turn is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 593,847, filed Jun. 14, 2000, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,447,919, issued Sep. 10, 2002; which in turn is a divisional of prior application Ser. No. 09 / 220,884, filed Dec. 28, 1998, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,156,389, issued Dec. 5, 2000; which in turn is a continuation-in-part of prior application Ser. No. 08 / 795,316, filed Feb. 3, 1997, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,853,894, issued Dec. 29, 1998.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The present invention relates to compositions for coating surfaces, surfaces coated with compositions, and methods of forming coated surfaces. More particularly, the present in...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0038] According to the present invention, the coating composition comprises a trifluoromethylated agent comprised of a fluorocarbon, hydrofluorocarbon, epoxy, urethane, silicone, acrylic or other material that has a terminal trifluoromethyl group and contains from about 3 to about 20 carbon atoms. Preferably, coatings made from such compositions exhibit tightly packed trifluoromethyl groups on the exposed coating surface. According to some embodiments of the invention, coating polym...

Problems solved by technology

When samples are quantitatively analyzed, it can be of critical importance that precise and representative amounts of sample are transferred, or else inaccurate results are obtained.

Due to the different affinities of some materials to adhere to the walls of a laboratory vessel, qualitative analyses such as concentrations of materials may also be adversely affected if certain materials in a sample selectively adhere to operational surfaces of the vessel walls.

Unfortunately, materials typically used in the manufacture of laboratory vessels do not sufficiently repel many biological sample fluids nor do they sufficiently resist the adherence of molecular constituents of such a sample fluid.

The sample fluids often wet the surface of the vessel causing residual quantities of liquid sample to cling to an operational surface of the vessel when the sample is removed.

In some cases, significant quantitative and/or qualitative errors result.

Drawbacks associated with silane treatments include a continued wetting of the vessel, adherence to the vessel walls by many samples, chemical reactivity with many reagents, and a tendency for the vessel to become wettable following the common practice of autoclaving for sterilization.

Silicones are known to freely migrate, leading to worries over sample integrity.

Many pipette tips are plugged with porous filters to prevent sample contamination from the pipettor barrel, yet these free silicones make the pipette tips slippery and cause the filters to become loose or dislodged.

Additionally, silicones must typically be added at a level of 2 percent by weight to be effective, making the cost prohibitive for many price sensitive applications.

This method is impractical, however, for treating the vast quantities of small vessels consumed by industrial, clinical and research establishments.

Furthermore, improvements in performance over silicone processes are only marginal.

While these methods offer improvements over silicon-based treatments, the time, expense and equipment required are not appropriate for high commercial volume articles that are often for one-time use and require very low inherent cost.

Extruded and fused Teflon® vessels are currently manufactured for special applications involving exceptionally harsh reagents but are expected to have a long service life because of their high material cost when compared to the cost of glass or polypropylene vessels.

While no attempts are known to coat laboratory vessels by such a procedure, it is expected that difficulties would arise as well as high cost in coating such vessels because of the shear bulk of the polymerizable solution to be irradiated and problems with fully washing the coated vessel.

Methods of making disposable, one-time use laboratory vessels such as pipette tips can involve a substantial loss of costly so...