Assessment of Aging Properties of Anti-Scratch Coatings by Nanoindentation

The assessment of aging properties of organic coatings on plastics is critical to the using safety and service life evaluation. This paper was dedicated to evaluate the aging properties, including humidity-heat and temperature shock tests, of various anti-scratch silicon coatings deposited on polycarbonate (PC) by adhesion and nanoindentation measurements. Adhesion behaviors through conventional cross-cut and tap peel tests reveal that there are no obvious changes of these coatings after aging experiments, all ranked as 5B. However, the changes of nanomechanical properties (elastic modulus and hardness) of coatings on PC after aging tests are obvious different for these coatings. Base on these results, it is proved that nanoindetation technique could be an available method to assess aging behaviors of thin coatings.