Even the waste from burning candles can become scientific treasure

Dec 5, 2011 19:21 GMT  ·  By

This is one of those situations where proverbs could come in handy, about one man's trash being another's treasure or some such.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz figured how they might make use of the soot given off by candles to improve displays.

The substance doesn't occupy a high position in users’ hearts, given its status as dark waste that tends to destroy the aesthetic value of everything.

Soot also tends to impair health if it gets inhaled, so the general preference of humanity to get rid of it through ventilation shafts is well justified (in theory).

The aforementioned group, though, looked past all this and discovered how candle soot could, ultimately, make smudge-repellant screens, of all things.

Smudges are the bane of all touchscreens, since fingerprints are, themselves, a type of smudge.

The new discovery claims that, through a certain process, soot makes glass superamphiphobic, a property which makes the smudges disappear.

The team applied candle soot to glass, after which they coated it in silica (to keep it in place) and heated the glass to 600 degrees C for calcination.

With that to turn the soot transparent, the team then applied solvents and oils to the glass, all of which were easily dispatched.

“We designed an easily fabricated, transparent, and oil-rebounding superamphiphobic coating. A porous deposit of candle soot was coated with a 25-nm-thick silica shell,” says the abstract from the team's report.

“The black coating became transparent after calcination at 600°C. After silanization, the coating is superamphiphobic and remained so even after its top layer was damaged by sand impingement.”

Not clear how much money this sort of coating will demand if panels are to become smudge-proof, but the candle industry will probably see a big monetary influx if it ever does.