Inorganic pigments play double-duty as fillers that provide a greater benefit than simple coloration of a formulation; they also impact physical properties of the film during application and throughout the product lifecycle. Pigments in coatings protect the resins and binders from electromagnetic or thermal degradation due to their reflectance of short-wave IR radiation, which also helps to keep the materials containing said pigments cooler.1
Before we can understand best practices for dispersing materials containing pigments, it is important to understand what a pigment is, and the chemical and physical reasons why we use pigments. Inorganic pigments are transition metal complexes,2 primarily oxides of crystalline or semi-crystalline repeating units of ceramic crystal lattice structure.