The Critical Pigment Volume Concentration Concept for Paper Coatings: II. Later-Bound Clay; Ground Calcium Carbonate, and Clay- carbonate Pigment Coatings

A previous study on the model coatings based on latex-bound plastic pigment coatings (1) has been extended to latex-bound No. 1 clay, ultra-fine ground calcium carbonate (UFGCC), and clay-carbonate pigment mixture coatings, which are being widely used in the paper industry. The latex binder used was a good film-forming, monodisperse S/B latex or 0.15$\mu\textrm{m}$. No. 1 clay was representative of plate-like pigment particles, whereas UFGCC was of somewhat rounded rhombohedral pigment particlel. Both of them had negatively skewed triangular particle size distributions having the mean particle suet of 0.7${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ and 0.6$\mu\textrm{m}$, respectively. Their packing volumes were found to be 62.5% and 657%, respectively. while their critical pigment volume concentrations (CPVC's) were determined to be 52.7% and 50.5% ( average of 45% caused by the incompatibility and 55.9% extrapolated) by coating porosity, respectively. Each pigment/latex coating system has shown its unique relationship between coating properties and pigment concentrations, especially above its CPVC. Notably, the clay/latex coating system hat shown higher coating porosity than the UFGCC/latex system at high pigment concentrations above their respective CPVC's. It was also found that their coating porosity and gloss were inter-related to each other above the CPVC's, as predicted by the theory. More interestingly, the blends of these two pigments have shown unique rheological and coating properties which may explain why such pigment blends are widely used in the industry. These findings have suggested that the unique structure of clay coatings and the unique high-shear rheology of ground calcium carbonate coatings can be judiciously combined to achieve superior coatings. Importantly, the low-shear viscosity of the blends was indicative of their unique packing and coating structure, whereas their high-shear rheology was represented by a common mixing rule, i.e., a viscosity-averaging. Transmission and scanning electron and atomic force microscopes were used to probe the state of pigment / latex dispersions, coating surfaces, freeze fractured coating cross-sections, and coating surface topography. These microscopic studies complemented the above observations. In addition, the ratio, R, of CPVC/(Pigment Packing Volume) has been proposed as a measure of the binder efficiency for a given pigment or pigment mixtures or as a measure of binder-pigment interactions. Also, a mathematical model has been proposed to estimate the packing volumes of clay and ground calcium carbonate pigments with their respective particle size distributions. As well known in the particle packing, the narrower the particle size distributions, the lower the packing volumes and the greater the coating porosity, regardless of particle shapes.