Abstract
Oriental lacquer collected from lacquer trees is widely used as surface coatings for centuries. The lacquer with little activity of laccase is called dead lacquer vividly which cannot be cured automatically. In this study, the cheap copper chloride dihydrate (K2CuCl4·2H2O) was used as a novel catalyst to cure the dead lacquer at room temperature. The redox property of K2CuCl4·2H2O was studied by cyclic voltammetry. The process of oxidative polymerization of urushiol was confirmed by FT-IR, 1H NMR, UV–vis, and electron spin-resonance spectroscopy. At 75% relative humidity, the dead lacquer film with the gloss of 101.0% and hardness of 0.84 (glass value) could be obtained when the K2CuCl4·2H2O content was 0.6wt%. The results of the thermal properties and the chemical resistance tests showed that the dead lacquer film catalyzed by K2CuCl4·2H2O had better thermal stability and chemical resistance than those of the raw lacquer film catalyzed by laccase.
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