A drive through paint design: self-healing paint

Cars are perceived visually, and so the type of paint used can help define a vehicle’s character and styling. Often, the colour of paint used can even help to highlight key features of a car’s exterior design. 

This series takes a look at different paint types such as pearlescent, metallic and matte, innovations in painting technology such as self-healing paint and trends in paint colours.  

This week, self-healing paint.

What is it?

Self-healing paint is a special type of paint that can repair itself from light scratches. Generally, the repair process takes several days and may be sped up by exposing the car to light or washing with warm water.

How does it work?

Self-healing paint works due to the clear coat used in the paint. The typical automotive paint uses a hard clear coat that can scratch when it comes in contact with an abrasive object. In contrast, self-healing paint uses a softer clear coat that isn’t completely dry. Scratching this clear coat simply re-arranges the molecules that make up the coat. Under the application of heat from sources such as warm water or sunlight, these molecules receive the energy to re-arrange themselves in their original scratch free state.

By way of analogy, self-healing paint works like scratching a piece of ice. If the ice is scratched, letting it melt and then re-freezing it will restore it back to its original state. Likewise, applying heat to a scratched car with self-healing paint further softens the clear-coat and helps the molecules re-arrange themselves after a scratch.

Alternatives

There’s no need to worry about scratches if your car doesn’t have self-healing paint. Certain paint-protection films offer similar healing capabilities when applied to normal paint.

These films include a layer made from elastic polymers that eliminates scratches in the same fashion as a soft clear coat. A thicker polyutherane layer is often also incorporated to help prevent stones or gravel chipping the paint.

Disadvantages

The key disadvantage of self-healing paint is that it can only repair light surface scratches that are contained within the clear coat. Deeper scratches that break through this thin layer of paint can’t be healed by the elastic polymer and will require a visit to the body shop to fix.

Self-healing paint also requires some amount of special care. Abrasive car polishes should not be used as they can cut into and remove the special clear coat that gives the paint its healing capability.

Another disadvantage is the longevity of the self-healing capability. The self-healing capability is dependent on the clear coat being soft and elastic so that its molecules can re-arrange themselves after a scratch. Over time (generally 5-6 years) the clear coat will harden and gradually lose its ability to repair scratches.

What do you think - self-healing paint: gimmick or neat? Tell us in the comments.