How to optimize pigment dispersion stability in solvent-based coatings and inks?

QT-24000 solid dispersant, through its polyester multichain polymer structure, enhances pigment wettability and improves dispersion stability in solvent-based and UV ink systems. It improves the grinding efficiency of carbon black and organic pigments, reduces viscosity fluctuations and color floating, and is suitable for packaging inks, industrial coatings, and other applications, maintaining shelf life.

In solvent-based coatings and inks (such as gravure packaging inks and UV offset printing systems), high-surface-energy pigments (such as carbon black) tend to agglomerate, leading to uneven dispersion, increased viscosity, fluctuations in tinting strength, and storage flocculation. Especially in demanding applications such as retort-resistant inks, pigment dispersion stability directly impacts coating color saturation and print quality.

Current pigment dispersion processes face four unmet needs:

Inadequate dispersion efficiency: High-surface-weight carbon black requires repeated grinding to achieve a single-particle dispersion, increasing energy consumption and time costs;

Complex viscosity: Traditional dispersants have limited viscosity reduction effects, resulting in reduced fluidity in high-solids systems and causing clogging of printing screens;

Poor storage stability: Dispersed systems are prone to flocculation and coarsening, leading to stratification or loss of activity during ink storage;

Color development fluctuations: The tinting strength of organic pigments is affected by dispersion uniformity, increasing the tendency for batch color variation.

While phosphate dispersants can improve wettability, excessive addition may reduce film water resistance. Acrylic products have weak anchoring ability for carbon black, preventing coarsening, and lack compatibility with photoinitiators in UV systems.

Molecular anchoring enhancement: The hydrophobic ends of the polymer chains embed into the pigment pores, preventing particle reagglomeration through steric hindrance, thereby improving single carbon black particle dispersion and jetness.

Rheological optimization: This reduces the resin-pigment interfacial energy, mitigates viscosity fluctuations in high-solids systems, and simultaneously improves print flow and dot reproducibility.

Multi-system compatibility: Chemically inert and compatible with solvent-based coatings, UV inks, and retort-resistant systems, maintaining dispersion stability and color consistency.

This dispersant has demonstrated viscosity reduction in gravure flexible packaging inks. As a solid dispersant, its pre-solubility properties (requiring solubility in benzene, ester, or ketone solvents) have been extended to the automotive refinish coatings market.