Work

A facile salt-templating route to design polyvinyl butyral based coatings for birch wood surfaces

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: The need for wood surface protection in building and outdoor applications has intensified the search for innovative strategies in developing coating technologies. This research aimed to design a novel porous coating based on polyvinyl butyral (PVB) to ensure birch wood surface protection using a dip-coating procedure and a salt-templating methodology to achieve a porous structure. Firstly, the optimization of porosity has been achieved by using different NaCl crystal sizes. Sodium chloride, used as a porogen, was ground using mechanical milling for different times (0-12 h). Analyses of morphology, roughness, pore size, and water contact angle were carried out to select the optimal milling time. Then, by setting it equal to 2 h, which provided a mean pore size of PVB coating of 5 μm, carvacrol was loaded into the coating to further improve its properties, setting its concentration from 0 to 30% w/w. Barrier properties to water vapour of PVB-based coatings evidenced a slight improvement in sorption and a lessening of water cluster phenomena occurrence after the coating. The presence of the coating ensured an improvement in solar reflectance from 63% for pristine wood to 78% after the coating. Besides, carvacrol ensured a noticeable antimicrobial activity in inhibiting S. aureus growth at low concentrations and E. coli at the highest concentration tested (30%) (2 log reduction in population density for both bacteria). These outcomes prove the potential use of PVB-based porous coating as protection of birch wood surface for outdoor applications and construction. • Porous PVB coatings for wooden surface with high performance are designed • Milling time of sodium chloride as porogen was correlated with the pore size of coating • Carvacrol was loaded to confer an antimicrobial activity in inhibiting S. aureus and E. coli growth

Source: Materials Today Communications

DOI: 10.1016/j.mtcomm.2025.114578

Authors: Gianluca Viscusi, Nicola Morante, Gianmaria Oliva, Giovanni Vigliotta, Giuliana Gorrasi

Institution: University of Salerno

Language: English

Topic: Wood Treatment and Properties

Subfield: Building and Construction

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,830

Funders: European Commission, Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca, Ministero dell'Istruzione e del Merito