Elastic floorings are treated with floorcare products to increase lifetime and maintain optical properties. Floorcare coatings improve soiling, cleaning and wearing behavior of elastic floorings and provide protection against scratches, abrasion and walking imprints. Especially for areas of heavy use, basic cleaning is necessary on a regular basis, where old coating has to be removed completely and new coating is applied.

Renewal of floorcare coating is very time-, personnel- and cost-intensive and leads to considerable delays in operation of building operator: Basic cleaning is achieved by use of large amounts of water and chemicals. Afterwards flooring has to dry for a long time (up to 12 h), before it can be recoated. Flooring cannot be used during this time period. In order to ensure intact film formation during subsequent reapplication of floorcare product, drying times of at least 30 minutes per layer must be observed. Furthermore, floorcare coating has to dry up to 24 h.

A photoswitchable floorcare coating based on an interpenetrating network, which enables light-induced coating and decoating of elastic floor coverings (irradiation with VIS light for coating or irradiation with UV light for decoating), was therefore developed at the wfk – Cleaning Technology Institute. Interpenetrating network of photoswitchable floorcare coating was realized by including a network with switchable binding sites into network of a conventional floorcare coating.

In coating process, photoswitchable floorcare coating shows high stability and adhesion to elastic floorings after irradiation with VIS light for only 150 seconds. In decoating process, it can be easily removed after irradiation with UV light for 60 s using a moist melamine pad. Elastic floorings can be recoated directly after decoating, as only very small amounts of water remain on floorings.

The research report is available on request from FRT.