Opportunities and Challenges for Clean Surfaces

Keywords:
self-cleaning, dirt-shedding, antimicrobial, self-decontaminating, surfaces

Abstract:
Massive amounts of time, effort, materials, and money are spent every day to keep surfaces free of dirt, dust, germs, bacteria, viruses, and other potentially hazardous contaminants. The ability to create active surfaces that continually mitigate such contaminants has been an evolving goal in various materials sectors. Terms such as “self-cleaning”, “dirt-shedding”, “antimicrobial”, and “self-decontaminating” are common to those in advanced materials R&D, especially where nanostructured surfaces and active nanomaterials can apply. While the perceived health and convenience benefits seem obvious, major technical and marketing challenges exist and need to be addressed to enable broader adoption of active clean surface technologies.PPG Industries, a global leader in coatings and specialty products and services, leverages nanotechnology as a platform to provide value-added materials to its customers. As a pioneer in nano thin film coatings with production scale capability, PPG introduced the world’s first low emissivity glass product in 1983. New nano-enabled functional glass and coating products have continued to be developed, including SunClean® glass, Aquapel® glass treatment, and CeramiClear® coatings for automobiles. This presentation will discuss some of the nanomaterial advances for clean surfaces as well as opportunities and challenges from a technical performance and marketing perspective.

Nanotech 2008 Conference Program Abstract