Key takeaways

• Ureido methacrylamide monomers are capable of multiple hydrogen bonds which can lead to increased cohesive strength and enhanced coating properties.
• Sometimes innovation is just a matter of taking a step back and looking at the chemistry in front of you.

The American Coatings Show and Conference, held in Indianapolis from May 5–7, was by all accounts a success. Attendance felt a bit lighter than past years (8000+ vs 9000 in 2024), but nearly every supplier I spoke with said the same thing: fewer people, but far better conversations.  On the show floor and in the conference sessions some of the themes were sustainability, PFAS (forever chemical) replacements, digitalization and AI, and dirt pickup resistance.

In a number of  discussions on the show floor, suppliers were exploring how to enter new application spaces using their existing raw materials or by developing adjacent ones. The instinct for many of us with scientific training is to invent new chemistry first and let someone else figure out the market, which is a product centric mindset. The more strategic approach is to start with market needs, or even create a new customer want, and work backwards to see whether your technology can deliver.

So what was one of my biggest takeaways from the show?

It wasn’t a new application area. 

It wasn’t a breakthrough chemistry. 

It wasn’t a new measurement technique.

It wasn’t a digital tool, a sustainability advance, a PFAS replacement, or an AI workflow.

In fact, you could say it wasn’t anything new at all.

Rethinking a Familiar Monomer

Ureido functional monomers, often called “wet adhesion monomers” (WAM) are well known in architectural coatings. They’re typically incorporated into latex polymers to improve wet adhesion, which is the ability of a coating to stay anchored to a substrate under wet conditions.  As a polymer chemist, I’ve added these monomers to latex recipes countless times for exactly that purpose, without giving much thought to what else their structure might enable.

At the American Coatings Conference, Celine Burel of Syensqo presented “Impact of Ureido Monomer on Polymer and Paint Film Surface Properties.” (1) In her abstract, she noted that ureido methacrylamides, “with their large dipole moment and plenty of hydrogen bonds, have a unique chemical structure that has yet to reveal its full application potential.”

The wet adhesion data she shared was expected. But then she showed something more interesting.  Reduced water whitening and water absorption in ureido methacrylamide functionalized latex films.  Coatings incorporating those latexes had harder surfaces and better dirt pickup resistance than those coatings employing latexes without ureido methacrylamide functionality.  These aren’t the typical talking points for a “wet adhesion monomer.” But when you stop looking at the product name (Syensqo’s is Sipomer WAM II) and instead look at the chemistry, the broader performance profile makes perfect sense.

Why the Structure Matters

Ureido methacrylamide is highly polar, containing both an amide group and a ureido group. Each monomer carries an amide N–H and a urea N–H, both capable of strong hydrogen bonding with ureido and amide groups on neighboring polymer chains.  This creates a network of physical, non‑covalent crosslinks, reminiscent of supramolecular interactions and similar to the hydrogen bonded hard segments in polyurethanes that give them their characteristic rubbery behavior. Given that, the properties Burel highlighted are exactly what you’d expect from a polymer with enhanced physical cohesion.

And now that I’m thinking about this monomer structurally rather than functionally, I can already see at least one additional application area worth exploring.  What new application areas await those other raw materials already in existence?

Sometimes innovation really is sitting right under your nose. You just have to step back and look at the chemistry in front of you.
 

(1) Full Conference Session Schedule | American Coatings Show

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(photo credit: image generated by Microsoft Copilot)