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Oxyethylene (PEO)/oxypropylene (PPO) triblock polymers are added to colorant formulations to determine the influence of molecular weight and other structural variances on the rheology and color development of tinted latex paints. Waterborne coatings are a matrix of many coating components. In this study, a 108- or a 600-nm latex was thickened with a nonassociative thickener, hydroxyethyl cellulose, or an associative telechelic HEUR thickener. Triblock polymers with internal PPO segments and PEO terminal segments added as a dispersant to colorant packages, lead to better color development than PPO/PEO/PPO triblocks dispersants in carbon black (CB) tinted paints. The increase in color development with high molecular weight (MW) triblocks starts at a very low concentration (2 mM) and plateaus in a Langmuir-type adsorption isotherm. Lower molecular weight triblock polymers also exhibit this behavior in CB-, red-, and yellow-tinted latex coatings; however, increasing the terminal PEO segment sizes leads to better color development only in the CB-tinted coatings. With large PEO terminal units red and yellow tints are high only at very low concentrations (2 mM) of the triblock. This parabolic response in color development, in contrast to CB-tinted formulations, is attributed to the high surface area and porosity of CB that limits the amount of large PEO segments interacting with the talc particle present at twice the volume fraction of the colorant. With the lower surface areas of the red and yellow colorants, the interaction of the large PEO terminal segments with talc particles accounts for the limited triblock concentration for which good color development is observed. This can be reversed by decreasing or eliminating talc from the formulation.

A matrix of coating variables, nonassociative versus associative thickeners, different latex median particle sizes, individual surfactants and colorants [carbon black (CB), red, and yellow pigments], was examined for their influence on variances in coatings rheology and color development. Within the different coating groups, the variable of interest in this study was the surfactant added to the colorant formulation. In all three colorant formulations, sodium dodecyl sulfate (an anionic surfactant) provided poorer color development (CD) than in applied formulations containing an equivalent nonylphenol oxyethylene (EO) surfactant. In CB formulations, nonionic surfactants with higher EO content provide improved color development at low (2 mM) concentrations, but near equality in CD is achieved with low EO surfactants at higher concentrations. In contrast to CB formulations, red and yellow colorants exhibit good color development with high EO content nonionic surfactants only at low nonionic surfactants concentrations. This variance appears to be related to the interactions of surfactants with inorganic pigments (talc and laponite) in the colorant formulation.

For almost two decades, it has been known that the addition of colorants to a waterborne latex coating thicknened with an associative thickener will result in a viscosity loss. The influence of surfactants on viscosity variations in waterborne latex coatings, as discussed in our most recent JCTCoatingsTech article,1 is the source of the viscosity decreases. To evaluate this problem, aqueous solutions containing large quantities of five different surfactants, and the smallest particle size of the colorants, carbon black (CB), were prepared. Large quantities of surfactant were used to allow for adsorption on, and stabilization of, CB. When traditional associative polymers (HMHEC, HASE, and a telechelic HEUR) were used to thicken carbon black dispersions, viscosity decreases were not observed, for most of the surfactnat is adsorbed on the CB’s surface. There is enough surfactant, however, to promote viscosity decreases in comb-HEUR thickened CB dispersions. Moving beyond the colorant dispersions, the CB, yellow, or red colorants were then added to a commercial latex paint that contains many surfactants, glycol ether, and coalescing aids, and significant viscosity decreases were observed. The decreases were very dramatic as the colorant concentration was increased to obtain deeper color tones, due to the additional excess surfactant added to the coating. Reduction in total surfactant levels in the colorant was an obvious solution, but this led to rub-up incompatibility. The conflict between viscosity retention and rub-up incompatibility was resolved when the surfactant concentration was reduced by adding to the colorant formulation compositionally different hydrophobically-modified poly(oxyethylenes) and hydrophobe-modified maleic acid co-oligomers.

Surfactants, varying in their chemical composition and hydrophobic behavior, are used in the formulation of a waterborne coating. These differences influence their aggregation in micellar structures, their interaction with associative thickeners, and in particular, the synergies present in their competitive adsorptions on the disperse phases in a waterborne coating. Adsorption of HEUR thickeners on latexes and the ability of surfactants to displace them from those surfaces is an important variable in the dispersion’s viscosity. With large particle latexes, viscosity increases arise primarily from the network built through the interaction of HEURs with surfactants in the aqueous phase. Fluorescence is used to verify the mechanism by which surfactants enhance associative thickener viscosities. That is best achieved with nonionic surfactants, because of their synergies with large hydrophobe HEURs at low concentration. With decreasing latex particle size the adsorbed species is an important contributor to the dispersion’s viscosity through its contribution to the latex’s effective volume fraction increase and when the size of the adsorbed HEUR is matched to the separation distances of the latex at 0.25 volume fraction. Achieving controlled shear-thinning behavior in small particle size latex paints with the economic constraints on the amount of HEUR required to obtain 90 KU viscosities are discussed.