Although increased visibility and improved thermal comfort, with reduced energy consumption, have been long sought-after benefits in the automotive and mobility industry, actual commercial and industrial viable solutions and applications have been lacking.1 Ways to solve these conundrums have been confined to binary solutions of a very-useful, but limited, number of light sources and retro-reflective reflectors, to accentuate extremities, and provide information on orientation of traffic participants and traffic objects. Another approach has been the development of a new NIR-transparent, black pigment, letting NIR radiation through, scatter-back-reflecting a small part of NIR radiation on a NIR-reflective primer coating, specifically for improved LiDAR visibility.2 However, these solutions still do not provide for a full visual grasp and understanding of the complete objects in an actual real-life day and/or night situation under different visibility angles for different visibility-capturing methods.2,3
Even though the application of retro-reflective pigments as a potential solution has been researched since the first half of the last century, and numerous patents have been filed in this field, RheoLightâ„¢ is the world's first 3D, form-free, industrially applicable and commercially viable, patent-portfolio-protected crystal glass-pigment (CGP) technology. This technology provides perfectly round crystal glass-microsphere dispersions that solve the technical challenges for incorporation in high-end color coating systems, providing increased visibility and detectability, while still maintaining the high-end thin-layer finish required by the automotive and wider-mobility industry.