International. A new coat of paint that makes self-cleaning surfaces robust has been developed by a team of researchers.
The coating can be applied to clothing, paper, glass and steel and when combined with adhesives, maintains its self-cleaning properties after being cleaned, scratched with a knife or sandpaper.
The study involved researchers from UCL, Imperial College London and Dalian University of Technology (China). They show how the new paint, from nanoparticles coated with titanium dioxide, can give a wide range of properties in self-cleaning materials, even during and after immersion in oil and after damage to the surface.
Self-cleaning surfaces work to be extremely water repellent, but often stop working when damaged or exposed to oil. The new paint creates a surface more resistant to daily wear, so it could be used for a wide range of applications, from clothing to cars, the researchers say.
Author Yao Lu, from UCL, said: "Our paint worked very well for a variety of surfaces in difficult conditions, which were designed to simulate the wear of materials in the real world. For example, car paint is frequently scratched and scraped, but we wanted to make sure our paint would survive that."
