Arkema Coating Resins, a business unit of Arkema, recently announced that a team of its researchers, led by Wenjun Wu, Ph.D., principle scientist, received the Roon Award from the American Coatings Association (ACA) at the 2015 Coatings Tech Conference in Louisville, Ky. The award is reportedly among the coating industry’s highest technical achievements and is used to recognize the best technical paper at the conference.

Entitled “Alkali-Soluble Resins (ASR) and Acrylic Blends: Influence of ASR Distribution on Latex Film and Paint Properties,” the paper was co-authored by a team of researchers including Wu, Christopher Miller, Ph.D.; professor Steven Severtson; Jihui Guo,  Ph.D.; Gang Pu, Ph.D.; and Jilin Zhang, Ph.D.

The research used a variety of analytical techniques to characterize the film formation behavior of a soft acrylic latex in the absence and presence of a high glass-transition temperature (Tg) ASR. The paper provides new insights into the component distribution in the latex and paint films containing ASR, as well as their impact on the end-use paint properties. The methods used in this paper can be applied to characterize component interactions and distributions in different polymer blends, as well as other additives in paint formulations.

For more information, visit www.arkemacoatingresins.com.