The NANOXID portfolio developed by IONICS contains a family of solutions designed for optical surfaces:
Efficient light reflectors used for luminaires or in solar applications have to withstand very often to severe industrial or outdoor conditions.A specific sol-gel NANOXID version developed by IONICS offers a long-lasting and efficient protection for light or solar reflectors.The NANOXID solution can be applied by spray or roll-coating and can resist up to 650°C in extreme outdoor conditions.
Current high performance metal reflectors are mainly based on PVD-coated aluminum or steel substrates, with total reflectivity going up to 97%. For high gloss (specular) finishes, the diffuse reflectivity (5°) should not exceed a few percents. Therefore, specular finishes need very smooth and flat metal substrates. This requires very expensive laminating processes, followed by sophisticated pre-treatments in order to avoid asperities and topological defects on the metal surface prior to the PVD-coating process. IONICS developed a NANOXID-version, which can be used as a cheap and universal pre-treatment for most types of metals. NANOXID will level and hide surface defects, while being compatible with the downstream PVD-processes.
Automotive designers and architects are permanently looking for new decorative surface features on glass substrates, while maintaining a perfectly transparent material. This can only be obtained by ultra-thin plasma coatings, and requires an expensive and sophisticated technology.IONICS developed a sol-gel nano-dispersion, which allows new decorative colored coatings for glass, possible to temper at 650 °C and applicable by conventional spray –systems.
