Multilayer Curtain Coating: An Enabling Method For New Paper Functions, 2006 Coating & Graphic Arts Conference

Curtain coating is an emerging low-impact premetered application method for coated paper and paper board. Significant work to date and some production experience on specialty papers has focused on single layer curtain coating. However multilayer curtain coating creates high market interest with many proposed advantages over single layer curtain coating. One advantage of lower material cost though use of functional chemistry in confined layers where performance is optimized within the coating structure. Another advantage is the ability to generate such thin layers, that even expensive chemistry, not applicable for common coatings technologies, becomes economically feasible. This paper reviews the potential of multilayer curtain coating to create new paper/paperboard functions and provides several working examples. These examples demonstrate the utility of using thin functional layers to create barrier properties, the use of chemical reactions between or within unique layers and the combination of these concepts into multilayer coatings that cannot be applied by any other coating method.