Joncryl^® 9500: water-based coating for stain resistant white furniture

White furniture is currently all the rage. But white wood surfaces are very sensitive when it comes to stains. With Joncryl^® 9500 these are all a thing of the past.

BASF has developed an environmentally friendly, water-based furniture coating which prevents coffee, red wine and mustard from leaving persistent stains on white furniture. The water-based 1-pack coating furthermore shows high scratch resistance and hardness.

The research behind

What is behind Joncryl^® 9500? We spoke to Dr. Wolfgang Gaschler, Dr. Sebastian Enck and Dr. David Hajnal, three of the experts involved in the development of the innovation, to get a glimpse behind the scenes.

Why are substances such as red wine, coffee or juice prone to leave persistent stains on white furniture coatings?

Gaschler: The problem is that such coatings are to protect against penetration by water-based coloring substances, such as coffee, but they are themselves based on water as a solvent. Thus, the key is the binder used in the coating. When we started our research project, no products fit for the purpose had been available so far, so we took the challenge to develop a binder for a stain-resistant, white furniture coating.

How did you approach this challenge? What were the next steps?
Enck: We first conducted nearly 100 experiments to come up with a possible recipe and we did find a solution that looked quite promising in endurance tests. 

Nevertheless, we were positive that the best possible outcome hadn't been achieved yet. In the end, it was the use of state-of-the-art digital research methods that really brought the best out of it.

How did digital research methods enable you to find the "perfect" recipe?

Hajnal: Our colleagues had already developed a very promising formulation by the time they approached us. Since the data was of high quality and reproducibility we had a good basis for a computational optimization. The model was capable of calculating the target properties based on the recipe and process conditions, and was used in an optimizing algorithm to devise ten new recipes. One of these was an instant success, and was an idea that may have never been discovered by traditional means.