Poly(2-hydroxyethylmethacrylate-co-styrene-4-sulfonic acid, sodium salt): A versatile hyperdispersant system for controlling the size of conducting polymer particles

These days conductive polymer science is under enormous pressure due to dovvngoing overall financial support and lack of competitive mass products, involving these interesting materials. From the commercial point of view, conductive polymer science can only survive the current economical crisis, if the materials can be introduced in the environmentally friendly paint+coating systems of tomorrow, i.e. powder coatings, radiation curing systems and, most important, water-borne ones. The prime application area of these new innovative products from todays point of view is, of course, the corrosion protection market, where tightening environmental legislations will make sure that every heavy metal compound containing protection material will be baned from the scene, say in 10–20 years, but probably also much quicker, if less toxic competition products appear on the market. This presentation first reviews the main reasons for the problems of conducting polymer science of today and the needs and problems of the application of conducting polymers for active corrosion protection purposes. Following is decribed a new synthesis/processing concept for conducting polymers, allowing for the preparation of conducting polymer materials in a quite comfortable and cheap manner ( overall cost of the ICP component < 100 DM/kg ) in general and for the preparation of tailor-made corrosion protection pigments in particular. Finally is described a new hyperdispersant material, allowing for the preparation of water-borne conducting polymer materials for different applications and simultaneously an elegant size control of the appearing conducting polymer species during synthesis. This hyperdispersant is poly (2hydroxyethyl-methacrylate-co-styrenesulfonic acid, sodium salt). The paper includes synthesis details, characterization data and application examples, say combinations of the prepared hyperdispersant material with different conducting polymers.