The era of intelligence is coming, when you drive a smart car, aim at a smart navigator, use a smart phone in your hand, buy smart appliances in shopping malls, install smart cameras and smart alarms at home, follow the development trend of smart society, and enjoy When enjoying an intelligent life, have you noticed that the paints with gorgeous colors and special properties are also intelligent? In an era of intelligence everywhere, intelligent paints are becoming a new force in paints, and their wide application The prospect will create an unprecedented market space for the coatings industry.
Smart paints can change colors according to light, temperature, sound, pressure, etc., can change patterns like a slideshow, and can even become a wall calendar, wall electrical switches... This is a recently held Dow Chemical-East China Institute of Technology It was conceived by four contestants Gao Liang, Li Shiyu, Lu Xin and Zhang Qi in the University Building Interior Wall Latex Paint Innovation Competition. It is understood that their bold imagination "smart paint in a colorful world - the concept and application of intelligent color-changing paint" has been incorporated into the future research and development goals of Dow Chemical. "I can't believe that the students' competition works have done so well, and we may not be able to do it ourselves." Dow's experimental staff said.
Last year, American scientists developed a cheap solar paint that can use semiconductor nanoparticles-quantum dots to generate energy and convert light into electricity, which is expected to allow us to achieve the goal of generating electricity on external walls. The scientists pointed out that the new solar cell coating has a high photoelectric conversion efficiency of 1%, which is far lower than the 10% to 15% conversion rate of current commercial silicon-based solar cells. However, they also said: "The coating is cheap to manufacture and can be manufactured on a large scale. If its photoelectric conversion efficiency can be further improved, it can really meet future energy needs." Kamat and colleagues also plan to further improve. Stability of new materials.
At the American Chemical Society in 2010, scientists announced the successful development of a smart paint that can "senses" temperature. Applying the material to the roof can not only reflect sunlight in hot summer, reducing high electricity bills, but also change its role when cold air hits, transporting solar energy into the house and maintaining the indoor temperature. During the paint making process, waste cooking oil is first liquefied into a liquid polymer that, unlike unprocessed cooking oil, does not give off any taste. In warm weather, asphalt roofs coated with smart coatings can drop 50-80% in temperature; in cold weather, the temperature can be increased by 80%.
In the 21st century, coating experts from some European countries put forward suggestions for developing smart coatings, which were quickly approved by world experts. The so-called intelligent coatings refer to coatings designed with intelligent polymers or materials, which have a certain special function or achieve unique performance in an innovative way.
Yang Zesheng, chief technical engineer of Guangdong Hongchang Chemical Co., Ltd., said in an interview with the media recently that future coating products may develop in the direction of intelligence, and there is still a lot of room for the development of intelligent furniture coatings, such as furniture coatings in the future. Perceive the environmental conditions and present different colors to adjust the owner's mental outlook and mood. It is believed that with the advancement of science and technology, it is entirely possible for coatings to achieve intelligence.
The reason why the concept of intelligence is proposed is relative to traditional coatings. Coatings in the traditional sense generally only have coating materials with protective and decorative properties. Usually these properties are unidirectional, that is to say, the properties cannot respond to changes in the surrounding environment, while "smart coatings" are just the opposite. , intelligent coatings can respond to changes in the external environment in a controllable way, producing adaptive special properties, so that the coating continues to remain effective.
At present, there are mainly several types of mainstream smart coatings, one is environmental feedback type, including sensing coatings, thermal and pressure-sensitive coatings, etc.; the other is nano-application type, including self-healing coatings, optical coatings, superconducting coatings, etc. Coatings, etc.; one is bioactive, including antibacterial coatings, bio-based coatings, photo-initiated and bio-initiated coatings, etc.; and another is innovative coating materials, including super-hydrophobic coatings, self-lubricating coatings and self-sacrificing coatings and many more.
As the world's largest raw material supplier, the Dow Coating Materials business unit has won a wide range of commercial value through multi-functional coating technology. Talking about the new generation of coating technology, Yulin Lin, general manager of Dow Coating Materials Business Unit Asia Pacific, said: "In the traditional concept, people think that the purpose of coating is to color the wall or prevent the metal from rusting. In fact, the coating technology It has entered an era of intelligence, and the development of science and technology has endowed paint with more functions, and it has also allowed paint technology to follow economic and social development to meet the needs of the ecological environment.”
The development of coatings is closely related to material science, especially the scientific development of polymer materials. The rise of nanomaterials technology in recent years has accelerated the rapid progress of intelligent coatings. In addition, the requirement of environmental friendliness has also greatly promoted the breakthrough of intelligent coatings in the fields of water-based, solvent-free, high-solid, energy-curable, powder coatings and so on. Although the development field of coatings in the future cannot be predicted with absolute accuracy, it is clear that with the continuous emergence of intelligent technology and the development of microscopic technology, the impact of the differentiation of coating products on society will be in the next few decades. Years of dramatic change - and it will help us paint a better future.
