The Biological Functionality of Electro-Galvanized Steels Coated with a Hybrid Composite Containing Pyrethroid

The electronic industries require environmentally-friendly and highly functional materials to enhance the quality of human life. Home appliances require insect repellent steels that work to protect household microwave ovens from incurring damage by insects such as fire ants and cockroaches in tropical regions. Thus, POSCO has developed new types of functional steels, coated with an array of organic-inorganic hybrid composites on the steel surface, to cover panels in microwave ovens and refrigerators. The composite solution uses a fine dispersion of hybrid solution with polymeric resin, inorganic and a pyrethroid additive in aqueous media. The hybrid composite solution coats the steel surface, by using a roll coater and is cured using an induction curing furnace on both the continuous galvanizing line and the electro-galvanizing line. The new steels were evaluated for quality performances, salt spray test for corrosion resistance and biological performance for both insect repellent and antimicrobial activity. The new steels with organic-inorganic composite coating exhibit extraordinarily biological functionalities, for both insect repellent and antimicrobial activities for short and long term tests. The composite-coating solution and experimental results are discussed and suggest that the molecular level dispersion of insecticide on the coating layer is key to biological functional performances.