Songwei Lu, Ph.D., PPG senior research associate and group leader for display coatings, will present “Commercialization of Sol-Gel-Based Transparent Functional Coatings” at the 19th International Sol-Gel Conference in Liege, Belgium, the company announced.

Lu is scheduled to speak at 11:30 a.m. on Sept. 5, according to PPG. 

According to Marketing Communications Manager Sharon Bird,  Lu’s presentation will highlight new performance advances in sol-gel-based transparent functional coatings for display applications featuring enhanced easy-to-clean (EC), anti-glare (AG), anti-reflective (AR) and anti-fingerprint (AFP) coatings.

The presentation will also address prototype sol-gel-based transparent functional coatings that PPG has developed and scaled from 4-kg lab batches to 40-kg lab batches at its U.S. development center, as well as commercialized in 100- to 1,000-kg batches at its Tianjin, China, plant, Bird added.

Per PPG: Sprayed onto glass substrates following low-temperature cure, the super-hydrophobic EC coating exhibits high deionized water-contact angles greater than or equal to 115 degrees and excellent abrasion resistance by passing at least 10,000 cycles using super-fine (#0000) steel wool under a 1-kilogram load. The coating also achieves silk-like tactile properties quantified by its extremely low coefficient of friction (COF), according to the company.

The sol-gel-based AG coating demonstrates gloss values between 50 and 120 gloss units (GU) with excellent pencil hardness (greater than or equal to 8 units of hardness) and no sparkling issues on touch-screen displays, PPG stated. When embedded with mono-dispersed latex particles, the coating can be applied on room-temperature glass while maintaining similar performance, per Bird. When the sol-gel-based AG coating is combined with an EC top coat, the coating stack also shows significant increases in stylus pen durability, she added. 

The sol-gel-based single-layer AR coating shows transmittance increases of 1.5 to 2 percent when applied by spray- or spin-coating on one side of a glass substrate, according to Bird. When the coating is dip-coated on a polycarbonate substrate, transmittance increases by 4 percent, she said. 

PPG’s newly-developed sol-gel-based AFP coating significantly hides fingerprints on the glass surface and offers excellent cleanability, the company said. The AFP coating can pass 2,000 cycles of a rubber-eraser wear-durability test under a 1-kilogram load and 400 cycles of the same test and load in the presence of ethanol, according to PPG. 

The five-day 19th International Sol-Gel Conference begins on Sept. 3, 2017.