Coatings and Thin Films Analysis and Testing

Across the lifecycle of a coating product, rigorous testing and analysis is required to ensure product quality is maintained, that all end-use application specifications or regulatory compliance requirements are met, or to find alternative coatings for an existing application due to considerations such green compliance goals or the need to improve performance.

The chemical composition and physical properties of coatings have a direct impact on their performance. Accordingly, it is essential to conduct comprehensive coating testing and analysis programs. These often require highly specialised analytical equipment and should be conducted by scientists who have industry coatings application experience and specialist insight in the area.

Our coatings experts are on call as a valuable third party resource, for all sizes of organisations and many types of innovative coating products and their applications. Our coatings testing experts provide analysis and advisory services to support your research, to help you gain understanding of the coating’s fundamental properties and chemical composition. 

In the product development phase, we support end-use performance through exacting procedures such as mechanical property testing, scratch resistance, conductivity, thermal stability, or detailed analysis of formulations, and how they may affect cure profiles. 

We deliver application studies such as substrate surface interactions, processing or product failure analysis, accelerated weathering, corrosion testing, raw material substitution, and determine if the end-user specifications are met. 

In the final or pre-production phase, the insight we can bring will help you to respond to questions regarding quality control, quality assurance, or meeting regulatory requirements. Post market launch, our expert, impartial advice is invaluable to support litigation cases and drive swift resolution of contamination investigations, as well as supporting marketing claims.

We have significant knowledge of materials testing requirements for powder coatings, polymers, aerosols, adhesives, specialty coatings, paints, inks, toners, lacquers, multilayer systems, laminates, thin-films, hot melt and sealants.  We work with many new and advanced coating materials such as graphene, nanomaterials, bio-based materials or novel polymers based products, and can generate data to allow comparison with established marketed products tested for a specific performance environment, to aid improvement of the product or benchmarking against competitors.

With industry expertise that spans coating applications within food packaging, medical device, automotive, aerospace, oil and petroleum exploration, construction, textiles, marine and pipeline applications, we can help you to advance your understanding of your coating product through robust testing using advanced instrumentation, taking you beyond just the test result, instead, providing the insight and guidance you need to achieve your goals and develop your product.