In general, artificial stone is an artificial synthetic article having a natural stone-like texture and appearance, which can be prepared by mixing natural metals in a resin. Two types of artificial stone include unsaturated polyester resin based artificial stone and acrylic resin based artificial stone.
Artificial stone may be used as an interior building material in place of natural stone, e.g. to form kitchen counter tops, wash bowls, dressing tables, bathtubs, wall panels, commercial counters, and so forth, due to its stone-like appearance, high quality texture, and good weatherability.
Artificial stone can be prepared with a single color, with multiple colors by mixing different resins with different colors, or with a natural stone-like texture and appearance by employing chips coated with various materials.
An important goal in artificial stone technology is imitating the natural marble-like texture and appearance of natural stone to provide a high quality product to meet consumer demand. Accordingly, there has been a great deal of research directed to preparing artificial stone having natural stone-like texture and patterns.
Korean Patent Publication No. 2009-59901 discloses an artificial stone including colored glass chips or colored mirror chips, which are prepared with a colored resin composition. Epoxy resin is employed as a base resin for the artificial stone composition or the colored resin composition.
Korean Patent Publication No. 2009-88147 discloses an unsaturated polyester artificial stone containing gold chips in which silica and/or inorganic material is coated with aqueous pearl pigments.
It is very difficult, however, to impart natural stone-like patterns and textures to artificial stone, and neither of the above referenced patent applications provides a high quality artificial stone with natural stone-like patterns and textures. One reason is that it is very difficult to prepare natural-like transparent chips. Another reason is that it is very difficult to uniformly distribute the transparent chips in the matrix resin so as to prevent the so-called “breaking” phenomena between the transparent chips and the matrix resin.