How can glass paint protect surfaces from sunlight?
How can glass paint protect surfaces from sunlight?
Learn about the development and applications of glass paint, which is made of silica glass and formulated to reflect sunlight, protecting surfaces from heat and damage.
© American Chemical Society (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Transcript
NARRATOR: We all need sunlight. But those golden rays can be brutal on even our toughest structures. The sun makes everything from car doors to bleachers too hot to touch and wears down the surfaces of roofs and naval ships. To fend off damage, scientists have developed a paint out of glass that bounces light off metal surfaces to keep them cool. Jason Benkoski and his team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory are presenting their new coating at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston. Benkoski's paint is designed to reflect all sunlight and passively radiate heat, keeping damage from the sun at bay.
JASON BENKOSKI: Most of your damage, whether it's corrosion or aging or any other type of deterioration, gets accelerated at high temperatures. And so by keeping the temperature down-- as much effort as you might put into, for example, putting corrosion inhibitors in your paint, you could just as easily lower the temperature and get the same exact effect.
NARRATOR: To develop the new paint, Benkoski used a lot of chemistry and a lot of laundry hampers. He measured the temperature of various experimental coatings by placing test plates inside hampers to control for wind and ground temperature.
BENKOSKI: Pretty inexpensive solution that actually controls for convection. It controls for conduction. And it's really convenient.
NARRATOR: Back in the lab, Benkoski settled on a paint derived from silica, one of the most abundant materials on earth and the main compound in glass. But glass is also very brittle. So Benkoski had to make several tweaks to create the ideal paint.
BENKOSKI: You can mix it and it'll be stable for about three or four hours. So that gives you plenty of time to spray paint it. But when it dries, it's irreversible. So it doesn't re-dissolve.
NARRATOR: It's also almost entirely inorganic, which means it will last a lot longer than most conventional polymer-based paints.
BENKOSKI: It's almost like painting a rock on top of your metal. And this thing is going to last for not tens of years but maybe hundreds of years.
NARRATOR: Benkoski's lab is developing the paint for use on naval ships. But it has many other commercial applications from cars to roofs to one more application near and dear to his heart.
BENKOSKI: Playground slides, definitely. I have a two-year-old so we've had that experience.
NARRATOR: He says he expects his lab will start field testing the material in about two years.
JASON BENKOSKI: Most of your damage, whether it's corrosion or aging or any other type of deterioration, gets accelerated at high temperatures. And so by keeping the temperature down-- as much effort as you might put into, for example, putting corrosion inhibitors in your paint, you could just as easily lower the temperature and get the same exact effect.
NARRATOR: To develop the new paint, Benkoski used a lot of chemistry and a lot of laundry hampers. He measured the temperature of various experimental coatings by placing test plates inside hampers to control for wind and ground temperature.
BENKOSKI: Pretty inexpensive solution that actually controls for convection. It controls for conduction. And it's really convenient.
NARRATOR: Back in the lab, Benkoski settled on a paint derived from silica, one of the most abundant materials on earth and the main compound in glass. But glass is also very brittle. So Benkoski had to make several tweaks to create the ideal paint.
BENKOSKI: You can mix it and it'll be stable for about three or four hours. So that gives you plenty of time to spray paint it. But when it dries, it's irreversible. So it doesn't re-dissolve.
NARRATOR: It's also almost entirely inorganic, which means it will last a lot longer than most conventional polymer-based paints.
BENKOSKI: It's almost like painting a rock on top of your metal. And this thing is going to last for not tens of years but maybe hundreds of years.
NARRATOR: Benkoski's lab is developing the paint for use on naval ships. But it has many other commercial applications from cars to roofs to one more application near and dear to his heart.
BENKOSKI: Playground slides, definitely. I have a two-year-old so we've had that experience.
NARRATOR: He says he expects his lab will start field testing the material in about two years.