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Over the past two decades, the production of plastics throughout the world has more than
doubled1. The advantages of using plastics are their light weight, corrosion resistance, ease of
manufacturing, and the wide range of dynamic and mechanical properties that can be obtained
depending on the nature of the plastic. However, all plastic substrates suffer from poor abrasion
resistance and, depending upon their application, require a protective coating. The majority of
commercial hard-coats for transparent plastic substrates are based on thermally cured solventbased polysiloxanes. These coatings exhibit excellent abrasion and weathering resistance, but the thermal curing process is both time and energy consuming. UV-curable coatings, on the
other hand, can be cured at room temperature and with fast cure speed, but have limitation in
their hardness and abrasion resistance.
Recently, our colleagues at JSR developed clear organic/inorganic (hybrid) hard-coats
composed of silica particles modified with acrylate substituents and dispersed in UV curable
acrylate matrices2. These organic/inorganic coatings combine the advantages of both UV-curable
organic coatings and heat curable inorganic coatings. The two principal formulations are 4D5-15
and 4D5-21, and both contain 50 wt% solvent and 40 wt% inorganic content. The objective of the
work presented here was to investigate the influence of UV absorbers and light stabilizers on the
weathering properties of these hybrid hard-coats.
