Protective space coatings: a ceramer approach for nanoscale materials

There is a concerted and focused push to develop protective space coatings for vehicles in low earth and geosynchronous orbit. The space environment is not suitable for organic materials due to atomic oxygen, high energy particles, and deep UV light being able to degrade polymeric organic resins. An inorganic/organic hybrid coating, known as a ceramer, will be fabricated using a polysiloxane binder and nanophase silicon/metal-oxo-clusters derived from sol–gel precursors. The binder of the coating will be a substituted polysiloxane terminated with a cyclohexyl epoxide. The cyclohexyl epoxide will be cured at ambient temperature via a cationic UV curing mechanism. PDSC will also be used to investigate the effects of temperature, UV light intensity, sol–gel precursor concentration, and exposure time have on the rate of polymerization. Nuclear magnetic resonance and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy were used to characterize the synthesis of the polysiloxanes. The rate of polymerization was found to increase as temperature, intensity, sol–gel precursor concentration, and exposure time were increased.