Coloray announced on the 18th that it is officially embarking on the development of high-performance conductive composite materials, a core technology for automotive coating.
Coloray officially applied for a national provincial-level scientific research project in Zhejiang Province, China on the 17th, and approval is expected in August.
High-performance conductive composite materials are a key technology that enables non-conductive automotive exterior plastics to become conductive through coating, allowing the application of color to cars using electrostatic spray.
The traditional automotive coating method involved spraying air spray, but recently, to improve work efficiency and protect the environment, it is being replaced by electrostatic spray coating. Electrostatic spray coating improves work efficiency by 10 times compared to conventional artificial air spray, increases coating utilization by 25-40%, reduces production costs, and lowers emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC), thereby minimizing environmental damage and harm to construction workers caused by coating production.
Since 2019, Coloray has formed a professional scientific research team and started R&D on high-performance conductive composite materials in collaboration with the Department of Chemical Materials Engineering at JIANGNAN University, a top 1% world-class university in chemical materials research. After four years of technical research, they have succeeded in developing products with performance comparable to those developed overseas.
The high-performance conductive composite materials developed by Coloray are based on nano-mica and combine the company’s proprietary conductive layer film coating technology with surface modification technology. An effective method to impart conductivity to plastic components is to coat the surface of the plastic parts with a conductive primer to form a conductive layer.
The core component of conductive coating is the conductive filler, which generally includes three types: metal-based fillers, carbon-based fillers, and metal oxide-based fillers. Various metal powders (fillers) have strong conductivity, but except for silver, powders such as aluminum, nickel, and copper are prone to oxidation and have poor corrosion resistance, while silver powder is expensive. Additionally, metal powders generally have very high density, causing them to clump at the bottom and have poor dispersibility.
Carbon-based conductive fillers (carbon black, carbon fiber, graphene, carbon nanotubes, etc.) have good conductivity and stability but are difficult to disperse uniformly, and their black color limits their use to black paints only. Therefore, there is a need to develop conductive powders that are light in color, have low specific gravity, and possess good conductivity and stability.
Currently, materials used for automotive conductive primers in the Chinese market are all imported. A representative product developed by Ishihara in Japan exists, but its average price is about 500,000 to 700,000 yuan per ton (approximately 120 million KRW), which is very high, increasing the cost of automotive primer coating materials as well.
In 2022, China’s automobile production and sales exceeded 26 million units, and with the increase in automobiles, the demand for high-performance conductive composite materials used in automotive primers is also rising.
A company official stated, “Through years of accumulated technology and experience, Coloray has developed high-performance conductive coating materials, which are expected to simultaneously reduce raw material costs and protect the environment in the automotive industry. Currently, high-performance conductive composite materials are 100% dependent on imports, but if replaced by Coloray’s products in the future, significant profitability is anticipated.”
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