FC-1620 is a nonionic fluorocarbon surfactant, ranking among the wetting and leveling agents featuring the highest efficiency in reducing surface tension, lowest dosage requirement and broadest system compatibility for coating systems currently available.
Distinction from conventional silicone and hydrocarbon wetting agents:
Conventional additives can only lower the minimum surface tension of aqueous systems to 30–35 dyn;
FC-1620 can reduce the surface tension of aqueous systems to an ultra-low level of 21 dyn, thoroughly resolving persistent defects including poorly wettable substrates, poor leveling in high-viscosity and high-solids systems, craters, fish eyes and pinholes.
The primary pain point of waterborne coatings lies in the extremely high surface tension of water at 73 dyn, which results in extremely poor wetting on low-surface-energy substrates (plastics, PC, PP, aged paint films).
Mechanism of FC-1620:
Its fluorocarbon segments deliver strong hydrophobic and oleophobic properties, enabling rapid oriented arrangement at the gas-liquid interface; high surface tension of water can be overcome with an extremely low dosage.
It significantly cuts the dynamic surface tension of coatings and greatly accelerates the wet spreading rate during spraying.
Improves the atomization performance of waterborne paints and prevents orange peel and craters.
Free of silicone contamination, exerts no adverse impact on recoating, and avoids side effects such as silicone-induced craters.
Applicable systems: Waterborne acrylics, waterborne epoxies, waterborne polyurethanes, waterborne industrial coatings, waterborne baking finishes.
High-solids systems feature high viscosity, high resin content and poor fluidity, leading to difficult wetting and frequent defects such as brush marks, flow marks, uneven film thickness and pinholes.
Exclusive advantageous mechanism of FC-1620:
It maintains powerful interfacial activity even under high resin concentrations without being inhibited by high solids content or high viscosity.
Reduces the interfacial viscosity of resin systems and enhances the self-leveling performance of coating films.
Eliminates crater and volcano-shaped defects triggered by uneven solvent volatilization in high-solids systems.
Boosts substrate penetration and adhesion for thick-coat high-solids systems.
Solvent-based systems (epoxy, PU, acrylic, UV epoxy) inherently possess relatively low surface tension, yet craters may still form due to substrate contamination, poor resin compatibility and uneven system interfaces.
Mechanism of FC-1620:
It exhibits excellent solubility in organic solvents, epoxy resins and polyol systems without phase separation or precipitation.
It further lowers the surface tension of organic systems (down to a minimum of 17–23 dyn).
Effectively counteracts crater issues caused by oil stains, silicone contamination and low-surface-energy impurities within the system.
Enhances the flatness, gloss and mirror finish of coating films.
