Acrylic dispersions have found widespread use in modern coatings technology. Their excellent durability makes them suitable for indoor and outdoor decorative paints, and they can be formulated into high-resistance coatings for industrial uses.

Several properties are important for high-performance coatings, including the following.

Surfactants are, in most cases, water soluble and mobile components in the film. They have a tendency to cluster together or migrate (see Figure 1), either to the film-air interface or the film-substrate interface.1 In Figure 2, surfactant exudation to the surface of an acrylic dispersion film is shown, where the exuded surfactant crystallized at the polymer air interface. The surfactants can in this way seriously affect the water sensitivity of the film, as well as the adhesion characteristics.