Autonomous Formulation of Latex Coatings via Concurrent SANS and SAXS at RAL

Liquid formulations for industrial applications (paints, shampoos, etc.) contain 10s-100s of components to balance complex design requirements in response to product needs, environmental requirements, and other driving forces. In these mixtures, small perturbations to composition can cause drastic changes in performance due to changes in the phase behavior. Despite the availability of X-ray and neutron scattering techniques for quantifying liquid-liquid phase behavior, the large number of components makes mapping phase space challenging.
Driven by the nSoft industrial consortium, we have developed an autonomous formulation laboratory (AFL) which prepares liquid mixtures from stock solutions using a pipetting robot and performs small-angle scattering (SANS or SAXS) measurements. We have developed AI approaches that automatically analyze data and automatically choose the next solution composition.
We propose to use concurrent SAXS (Diamond I22) and SANS (LARMOR) to probe the desired aggregation of TiO2 pigment with polymeric latex binders. These composite particles are required to achieve the desired hiding properties of the coating at an appliable viscosity while reducing the amount of TiO2 pigment used in the formulation. Using the AFL, we will autonomously probe a series of different pigment and binder chemistries at various solution conditions (pH, salinity, etc) to determine the effect these variables have on the self assembly of the pigment-latex aggregates.