This book focuses on characterization of organic coatings by different testing methods and understanding of structure formation and materials properties. The knowledge of protective organic coatings and current test methods is based largely on empirical experience. This book aims at explaining the coating property changes during film drying and curing in terms of chemical and physical transformations. Current test methods are reviewed with emphasis on understanding their physical basis and expressing the test results in terms of comparable physical quantities. In general, this book provides readers a deeper understanding of the binder design, coating film formation process, properties build-up, appearance and defect formation, and automotive paint application. It also suggests manifold ways to improving the coatings performance. This book is designed for coating professionals to gain deeper understanding of characterization techniques and to select the right ones to solve their coating problems. It is ideal for both experienced and early career scientists and engineers. Also, it is useful for graduate students in the general area of protective coatings.

This book covers a broad range of materials science that has been brought to bear on providing solutions to the challenges of developing self-healing and protective coatings for a range of metals. The book has a strong emphasis on characterisation techniques, particularly new techniques that are beginning to be used in the coatings area. It features many contributions written by experts from various industrial sectors which examine the needs of the sectors and the state of the art. The development of self-healing and protective coatings has been an expanding field in recent years and applies a lot of new knowledge gained from other fields as well as other areas of materials science to the development of coatings. It has borrowed from fields such as the food and pharmaceutical industries who have used, polymer techniques, sol-gel science and colloidosome technology for a range encapsulation techniques. It has also borrowed from fields like hydrogen storage such as from the development of hierarchical and other materials based on organic templating as “nanocontainers” for the delivery of inhibitors. In materials science, recent developments in high throughput and other characterisation techniques, such as those available from synchrotrons, are being increasing used for novel characterisation – one only needs to look at the application of these techniques in self healing polymers to gauge wealth of new information that has been gained from these techniques. This work is largely driven by the need to replace environmental pollutants and hazardous chemicals that represent risk to humans such as chromate inhibitors which are still used in some applications.

This volume entitled "Protective Coatings and Thin Films : Synthesis, Characterization and Applications" contains the Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) held in Alvor, Portugal from May 30 to June 5, 1996. This NATO-ARW was an expert meeting on the surface protection and modification of solid materials subjected to interactions with the environment. The meeting attracted 10 key speakers, 40 contributing speakers and 3 observers from various countries. The existing knowledge and current status of the science and technology related to protective coatings and thin films were assessed through a series of oral presentations, key notes (titles underlined in the volume content) and contributed papers distributed over various sessions dealing with: (a) plasma-assisted physical and chemical vapor deposition processes to enhance wear and corrosion protection of materials, (b) low friction coatings operating in hostile environment (vacuum, space, extreme temperatures, . . . ), (c) polymer films for protection against mechanical damage and chemical attack, (d) characterization of the structure of films and correlations with mechanical properties, (e) wear and corrosion resistant thermal spray coatings, (f) functional gradient ceramic/metallic coatings produced by high energy laser beam and energetic deposition processes for high temperature applications, (g) protective coatings for optical systems, and (h) ion beam assisted deposition of coatings for protection of materials against aqueous corrosion.

This book addresses the problem of surface protection for aircraft engine turbine blades. It is based on the author's 30+ years of work on the development and application of coatings to protect against oxidation and hot corrosion. It describes and details a methodology for optimizing turbine blade surface protection. The distinctions of this book from other publications on this topic include: The performance of protective coatings is assessed and evaluated by the complex interconnections of their chemical and phase composition, structure, and physical-mechanical properties; The properties of overlay coatings are given for the wide range of compositions, including the possible coatings states after their production and long-term service; The principles for calculating the stresses and strains for coated turbine blades are reviewed.