Adhesion of Automotive Coatings to Low Surface Free Energy Substrates

The advent of the increased plastic usage in automotive applications has initiated a concurrent upsurge of plastic types. With the estimated usage of 4.2 billion pounds of plastic per automobile by 1999 in the United States and 12 billion pounds of plastic in automotive use worldwide by 2005, the coatings specialist has seen increased demands on coating selection. This paper covers the use of low surface free energy plastics, in particular thermoplastic olefins (TPO) which will account for 20 percent of the plastics utilized in the transportation industry, and discusses the variety of pretreatments used to gain adhesion to TPO. New coatings methods for adhesion “direct” to thermoplastic olefins are briefly described.