Asahi Glass Co., Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, has developed a fluorescent fluorinated water/oil-repellent coating material. According to the company, since this material generates fluorescence when illuminated by a light, inspection of a coated product can be automated to contribute to a drastic improvement in efficiency and accuracy of the inspection.

The conventional coating process to get the water/oil-repellent feature produces a thin, transparent film when the material is applied, making it impossible to visually inspect the product and difficult to automate the inspection. When illuminated with light in the 360 to 430 nanometer (nm) wavelength, the new coating material emits a turquoise colored light. This characteristic makes it easy to find any defect in the application so that efficiency and accuracy of the inspection can be much improved. Special features of this product are as follows.

• Durability of fluorescence: Both mechanical durability (the color is not easily transferred when the applied part is touched by the customer) and thermal durability (the pigment does not fly off even when heated) are high.
• The contact angles that represent its performance in terms of water/oil repellent are as great as 115° for water (deionized water) and 75° for oil (lubricating oil). (These figures were measured one hour after application to a stainless steel base material, treated at 120°C.)
• Can be applied to a wide range of base materials, including silicon wafers, stainless steel, brass, and liquid crystal polymers. Both spin method and dipping method can be used for application.
• Does not contain environmentally antagonistic materials, such as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) or perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), and its global warming potential (GWP) is as low as approximately 130.

For more information, call 011.81.3.3218.5259; e-mail info-pr@agc.co.jp or visit www.agc.co.jp.