Common matting methods for powder coatings

Why need extinction

Items with a matting effect can be seen everywhere in daily life: at home, on the way to work, or in restaurants under the night. The interior furniture mostly adopts matting surface, and the wooden board covering the outside of the restaurant is basically matting.

When faced with the effect of choosing bright or extinction, we are not limited to fashion and appearance requirements. Practice has proved that the requirements of easy cleaning, bright effect and touch feeling also affect our choice. When we arrive at the office, whether by car, bus or train, we will find that the interior decoration of all kinds of transportation is almost matt. From a practical and safe point of view, the school blackboards use matte surfaces to avoid glare. The interior of the car also adopts this type of design. Some economical and practical devices and interior decoration adopt non-glare matting paint for safety reasons.

Anti-reflection is an issue. The surface of skyscrapers is generally not painted with bright paint, but covered with pre-painted plates on steel or aluminum substrates, and all are used with matte paint to avoid dangerous reflections and irritate the eyes of pedestrians or car drivers.

In addition, economical and practical is another important factor in choosing the surface state of the coating. For example, when certain substrates are scratched, slightly pitted, and soiled, the use of matte paint can cover up these defects, but it is difficult to cover such defects with bright paint.

What is the matting effect

What is the ‘extinction effect’? For example, color, whether it is matt or shiny appearance, is a subjective impression formed by our senses. The light reflects from a flat surface into our eyes, and we classify it according to its gloss. (white)

Precisely speaking, only part of the light shining on the surface is directly reflected back, and the rest enters the paint film, scatters inside, and is absorbed by the pigment and the substrate. (Black, yellow)

The intensity of the reflection depends on the flatness of the surface. Mirrors, for example, are known to have high reflectivity for light, and their surfaces are very bright. In contrast, the microscopically rough surface of the paint film scatters light and reflects only part of the light. In this example, a yellow matte surface appears.

The condition for a perfect extinction effect is to scatter all incident light. This also means that direct light shining on the substrate is diffracted. Otherwise, the substrate will completely transmit light and form a bright appearance. The microscopic roughness of the surface of the paint film is the cause of light scattering, thus forming a surface with a matting effect.