Conducting Thermosetting Polymers for Composite Coatings

This Engage grant will initiate a collaboration between Elcora Advanced Materials (Halifax, Nova Scotia) and Dr. Michael Freund (Chemistry, Dalhousie University). Elcora is a producer of high-quality carbon materials - specifically graphite and graphene - and has identified anticorrosion coatings as an important future application for their materials. The global anti-corrosion coating market is expected to reach $26,627 million by 2022 and with the recent emergence of graphene as an attractive replacement to current coatings that contain toxic compounds, Elcora is ideally positioned to develop new, made in Canada, coatings and significantly expand their customer base. However, with limited experience in coatings and limited opportunity to develop new intellectual property to generate products, Elcora is unable to enter the market. Dr. Freund's group has over two decades of experience in the field of material and polymer science including the synthesis and characterization of anticorrosion coatings. His group has developed new thermosetting conjugated polymers that can be combined with nano-platelet graphite and graphene produced by Elcora Advanced Materials to generate new, high-performance coatings with anticorrosion properties. Elcora engineers and researchers in Dr. Freund's group develop formulations and coating methods that will generate a new product line for Elcora Advanced Materials. Characterization of the films in Dr. Freund's group will provide performance metrics required to market the new coating for various industries.