What Are Ceramic Coatings On Leather?
Ceramic coatings on leather are bad news. If you want your leather to last then use a proper coating system designed for leather rather than a system that forms a glass hard coating on leather stopping it breathing, increasing damage possibilities and premature ageing.
Ceramic is basically made up from one silicon atom and two oxygen atoms, known as Sio2.
Two oxygen atoms strongly bind together with a covalent double bond to form dioxygen or o2. Whereas one silicon atom, is a chemical element with the symbol Si and the atomic number 14, it’s a hard brittle crystalline solid and is as semiconductor.
Manufactured together they make Sio2 a ceramic coating system that forms a hard coating to seal the surface fully and stops it breathing, this is also known as silica, which is typically composed of silicon dioxide.
Titanium Dioxide SiO2
Mainly made from silica and titanium dioxide, there are many grades of ceramic coatings on the market today, some are better than others, but none of them are any good for leather as they create a hard shell on the surface stopping the leather from breathing naturally. Leather has to still breath to stay in perfect shape to avoid premature ageing and the natural controlled chemically balanced leather skin from losing all its natural goodness that’s been applied at the point of manufacture.
Quartz is a hard-crystalline mineral and silica is the major constituent of sand! Sounds interesting doesn’t it. It is sand and rock made into a liquid and applied to your leather and then it sets again to re-form that rock glass coating, you then use your leather, as normal, moving over the surface shaving off the silica making micro dust, e.g. sand again causing scratching and ageing to take place on your leather as the friction movement removes the coating and the lacquer, then your painted finish.
Quartz Hard Crystalline Mineral