Aluminium pretreatments

Aluminium pretreatment degreeeed only General test arrangement... 

Arrowsmith, D. J., CUlford, A. W., Davies, R. J., Moth, D. A. (1984). Durability of adhesively bonded aluminium pretreated by hard anodizing followed by a phosphoric acid dip. Extended abstracts for the international adhesive conference. PRI, London. 

He concluded that for aluminium and titanium certain etching or anodization pretreatment processes produce oxide films on the metal surfaces, which because of their porosity and microscopic roughness, mechanically interlock with the polymer forming much stronger bonds than if the surface were smooth . 

Many types of chemical treatment are used in industry. Chromic, permanganic, sulphuric, and chlorosul-phonic acids are often used as the oxidants. It has been shown that the adhesion of polyethylene to substrates, such as cellophane, steel, aluminium, and epoxy adhesives, improves upon pretreatment with any of the etchants mentioned previously. 

Fluoride-free acid cleaners are finding their way into the general pretreatment cleaning of aluminium as an alternative to strong alkali materials. 

The processes are dealt with fully in Chapters 11, 14 and 15. Because many paint systems include an initial surface pretreatment, e.g. chromated aluminium or phosphated steel, BS4479 1990, Part 3 deals with conversion coatings and should be consulted by designers. Whatever the method of treatment, liquids must be able to drain quickly and freely from the surfaces. Crevices where liquids can become entrapped are best avoided. The surface configuration needs to be such that active solutions can be washed away, leaving the surface to be painted completely free from unreacted pretreatment solution. Failure to achieve the requisite level of freedom from the surplus chemicals causes paint failure, e.g. osmotic blistering. 

The melting point of aluminium (660°C). The operating temperature usually reaches 750-850°C in pretreatment and 700°C in the bath, causing a loss in tensile properties of cold-drawn wire. On the other hand, if cold-worked material which is to be subsequently annealed is used in this process the annealing and coating operations may be combined, with obvious economic advantage. 

Modified pretreatment primer plus three coats of aluminium-pigmented vinyl copolymer. 

Aluminium coatings also provide a suitable key or pretreatment for subsequent coatings, e.g. aluminised steel provides a good base for vitreous enamel. 

New pretreatments for aluminium to enable it to be nickel plated more easily have led to novel decorative applications including large mirrors. Wyszynski has described a proprietary process applicable to a wide range of aluminium alloys. 

This is steel or aluminium sheet made in a continuous ribbon and wound tightly onto a bobbin to form a coil of metal. On a coil finishing line, the coil can be fitted at one end, and wound up pretreated, primed and finished on both sides at the other end. Sheets of painted metal can be cut from the coil and formed for use as the exterior cladding for, for example, industrial buildings and caravans. 

Other methods reported for the determination of beryllium include UV-visible spectrophotometry [80,81,83], gas chromatography (GC) [82], flame atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) [84-88] and graphite furnace (GF) AAS [89-96]. The ligand acetylacetone (acac) reacts with beryllium to form a beryllium-acac complex, and has been extensively used as an extracting reagent of beryllium. Indeed, the solvent extraction of beryllium as the acety-lacetonate complex in the presence of EDTA has been used as a pretreatment method prior to atomic absorption spectrometry [85-87]. Less than 1 p,g of beryllium can be separated from milligram levels of iron, aluminium, chromium, zinc, copper, manganese, silver, selenium, and uranium by this method. See also Sect. 5.74.9. 

The high electrical resistivity of aluminum oxide is believed to be the major reason why coatings continue to exhibit very strong adhesion to aluminium substrates even when localized corrosion is observed to occur. Therefore, by developing a pretreatment process for any metal substrate which produces a metal oxide with high electrical... 

Abstract— The use of organosilanes as adhesion promoters for surface coatings, adhesives and syntactic foams is described and reviewed in the light of published work. Data are presented on the beneficial effect of silanes, when used as pretreatment primers and additives, on the bond strength of two pack epoxide and polyurethane paints applied to aluminium and mild steel. It is shown that silanes when used as additives to structural epoxide and polyurethane adhesives are less effective than when used as pretreatment primers on metals but are highly effective on glass substrates. The compressive properties of glass microballoon/epoxide syntactic foams are shown to be markedly improved by the addition of silanes. 

The effect of using different silanes as pretreatment primers on the initial bond strength of a two pack polyamide cured epoxide to mild steel and aluminium is shown in Table 2. 

Most of the supported metallocene catalysts reported so far were devised to immobilise the metallocene on the surface of inorganic carriers, utilising the ionic interaction between the Cl ligands of the metallocene and the surface active site [schemes (19) to (21)]. Similarly, in the methylaluminoxane-pretreated catalyst, the metallocene is immobilised by an analogous ionic interaction [scheme (22)]. Therefore, it is obvious that catalyst precursors formed according to schemes (19) to (22) can be easily activated with common aluminium trialkyls. 

When considering results for AU/AI2O3 catalysts, it has to be remembered that the oxides, oxyhydroxides and hydroxides of aluminium can exist in many crystalline forms and can have a wide range of surface areas, these can both change in response to pretreatments, structure, surface area and changes during preparation are not always reported. There has been no systematic study of the importance of these variables on catalytic activity. 

With the help of complementary surface analysis techniques such as XPS, Static SIMS and AES, we have been able to show how a short (23 msfilms leads to a slight oxidation of the surface as well as to the formation of N2 containing species. These modifications are necessary for the improvement of the adhesion observed with a scotch-tape test. However, the presence of oxygen is not the only factor responsible for a good adhesion, since the AES profiles of die deposited aluminium, show the same oxidized interface in the case of the non treated metallized polymeric film. The films are pretreated in a corona discharge configuration (hollow electrode-grounded cylinder) and the aluminium is deposited onto the film in situ. 

Metallized polypropylene (PP) is used today in many different fields such as automotive, decoration, electrical. In order to obtain a good adhesion between the aluminium and the polymer a pretreatment of the film prior to the metallization is necessary. Indeed, the very extreme surface of the polymer has to be modified in order to prepare it to a good adhesion with the metal. Thus the polymer is placed in a low pressure plasma of nitrogen with a corona discharge configuration of electrodes, and the metallization is carried out in situ after the pretreatment in nitrogen. This process, which simulates an industrial polymer film treatment has proven a great efficiency for very short treatment times (23 ms) (1).However, the mechanisms responsible for the improvement of adhesion are not totally explained yet. 

In situ metallization described on Figure 2, is carried out by thermal evaporation right after the plasma pretreatment in N2. By this way, any contact of the treated polymer with air is avoided prior to the aluminium deposition. 

Figure 8. Auger profile of an aluminium coating deposited on a non pretreated polypropylene film...

Compared to its crystallic forms, polymeric aluminium hydroxide has a well-developed surface area. Fiessinger [5] reported that its structure depends on the following factors precipitation pH, r value (r = OH / (Al )), reaction rate, mixing power, time of aging, sludge pretreatment, temperature of precipitation, and the chemical composition of the substrates. 

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