Composites

Home Page

Investor Information

Business Partners

Vacancies

Members Login

Composites

Keronite offers a very good pre-treatment layer for subsequent finishing with decorative paints and lacquers or to create functional composites with PTFE, adhesives, lubricants or other metals. Micro and nano-scale porosities of Keronite ceramic facilitate the application of secondary materials and this in turn provides a composite structure with multiple properties such as highly durable wear resistant coatings with extremely low friction coefficient or ceramic coatings with non-stick properties.

The thin, outer layer of the Keronite ceramic surface is more porous than the dense functional layer and is therefore somewhat softer and rougher. This outer technology layer can easily be used by gentle polishing to give improved tribological performance in high wear applications, but if a topcoat is to be applied, the porosity of this surface is ideal for impregnation.

Independent tests conducted on Keronite as a pre-treatment for adhesive bonding have demonstrated that it can be used as an effective, eco-friendly alternative to phosphoric, chromic or sulphuric anodising. Lap shear adhesion tests have confirmed that a thin layer of Keronite improves the adhesive strength of the joint two-fold (at 27 MPa) when compared to a grit blasted and adhesively bonded joints (at 12 MPa) whereas corrosion and subsequent humidity tests have shown a thin Keronite layer to be responsible for preventing and minimising the corrosion creep from scribe lines when topcoats are damaged through to the substrate.

When used as a pre-treatment for A-class automotive paint finishes, there is an added advantage in that components treated with Keronite can be painted in a conventional steel-body paint process, passing through the phosphate bath without fear of corrosion.

The scratch resistance of Keronite is superior to that of conventional pre-treatment systems because of the unique surface characteristics. Scratch tests conducted by the University of Hull demonstrated that Keronite performs three times better than anodised magnesium in this respect.

The adhesion of the composite layer to the substrate can be enhanced threefold by the application of an e-coat topcoat and improved almost ten times over with powdercoat.).