June 2003

Isotron announces the award of two SBIRs to develop next generation CARC for US Marine Corps

Isotron has teamed with researchers at Bayer Corporation, Sherwin Williams, Air Products, MIT and Nanoscale Technologies to develop next-generation, single pack, no VoC CARC primer and topcoat coatings for the US Marine Corps. This SBIR Project will provide a novel approach to the development of a single pack and zero-VOC primer and topcoat systems for the Marine Corps’ land based equipment. The technical approach involves a comparison of two polymer concepts. One utilizes a water borne acrylic, the other a Moisture Cured Urethane (MCU). These coatings represent the latest in the state of the art materials to meet the durability, performance and application demands that are envisioned by the military for the foreseeable future. The resin synthesis will show the feasibility of combining cost effective polymer processing co ncepts with the use of an inorganic pore filing media. These features represent significant advances in the science of high performance chemical agent resistant coatings. The work will show the feasibility of supplementing the barrier properties with a mechanism to detoxify any CWA agent that comes into contact with the coating’s filler material. Such a feature compliments the polymer’s cross-linking, as a means to mitigate chemical agent transport through the film. These formulations will be tested using a screening protocol that will identify the polymer and processing approach.