PhD Candidate in tailoring the adhesion of the paint coatings

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NTNU Nanomechanical Lab , Department of Structural Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) is seeking a PhD Candidate in the field of interfacial adhesion mechanics. The PhD project is part of the innovation project for the industrial sector Tailoring Adhesion (TailAd) co-partnered by Jotun AS, SINTEF Industry and NTNU, and co-funded by Jotun AS and the Research Council of Norway.

Understanding adhesion properties of the paint coatings, both to the substrate and between the different layers within the coating, is of crucial importance to their performance. When the substrate to be coated is a metal, adhesion of the coating to it is referred to as direct-to-metal adhesion. In most commercially important cases, multiple layers of organic coatings are applied on a metallic substrate and in such cases inter-layer adhesion also plays a crucial role in determining the performance of the whole coating system. Therefore, direct-to-metal adhesion and inter-layer adhesion are both commercially relevant but involve different interfacial mechanisms of adhesion. Adhesion of coatings is a complex phenomenon depending on surface free energy, chemical bonds, surface roughness, cleanliness, and mechanical strength, etc. As a result, the interfacial parameters determining the direct-to-metal adhesion and inter-layer adhesion are different. 

Furthermore, a good initial adhesion may not always guarantee a good long-term adhesion since all organic coatings will age with time and interact with their surrounding conditions by e.g., water absorption, UV degradation, biocide leaching, etc. during service-time. Ageing (physical and/or chemical) can degrade coating layers allowing easier diffusion of (for example) water to the interface between the substrate and the coating, consequently leading to the failure of an individual coating or the whole coating system. Thus, developing a robust characterization methodology and establishing a new knowledge platform for adhesion properties of coating films on metals and between polymers will enable us to predict and optimize the design and performance of the paint coatings.

The PhD candidate will contribute to the development of new adhesion characterization methods, correlations of adhesion strength between layers to surface morphology, chemical bonding and coating process, prediction and optimization of durable adhesion strength of coatings. The work will be carried out at laboratories of NTNU, SINTEF Industry and Jotun AS.

The PhD candidate will work at NTNU Nanomechanical Lab, chaired by three full time professors and two adjunct professors from the industry. In 2021, it is 16 PhD students, 1 post-doc fellows, and 1 senior researcher working at the NTNU Nanomechanical Lab.

The PhD candidate will report to the supervising team with main supervisor Professor Jianying He at NTNU and co-supervisors Professor Zhiliang Zhang at NTNU and Research scientist Naser Esmaeili at Jotun AS.