Self-Cleaning Coatings Eliminate the Need for Detergents

Removing oil or grease stains from kitchen and bathroom countertops, mirrors and garage floors with nothing but water may seem like a thing of science fiction, but the tools to do this are already in the works. At the latest American Chemical Society (ACS) annual meeting, in Washington DC, experts have showcased a new type of self-cleaning coating, which will enable consumers to simply add water to dirty surfaces in the near future, and clean them right up. The new coating apparently works for glass, plastics, and a range of other materials as well.

“You add water, and the oil just comes right off like magic. These are eco-friendly coatings – environmentally 'green' in the sense that they eliminate the need for harsh detergents and solvents in settings ranging from home kitchens to industrial machine shops that must contend with heavy oil spills,” the lead researcher of the new project, Jeffrey Youngblood, PhD, says.He adds that similar types of coatings could also be added to common window-cleaning sprays, and that they would have the effect of preventing bathroom mirrors, automobile windshields and other surfaces from fogging up.

“The idea is to use these polymers to clean in situations where it's inconvenient to apply soap or anywhere you would need to have oil cleaned off easily. Oil fouling is always a problem. A lot of people overlook the fact that pure water will generally not remove oil from a surface, but using this product transforms water into a super detergent,” Youngblood shares. The expert is a material engineer at the Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana. He adds that the new coatings will prevent thousands of tons of phosphates from contaminating the environment every year.

The new coatings, which are entirely made out of water-sensitive polymers, are about 20,000 times thinner than the width of a human hair, and can break readily when in contact with water. “Our work is a big step forward toward usable materials as either additives or coatings, and few others are working in this area. Most research on self-cleaning is done with different surfaces,” the Purdue expert explains. He points out that the most promising results were obtained in the lab using these polymers as coatings to prevent the fogging of lenses.

“We have stored these on shelves and use it months afterwards, and we haven't noticed a decrease in performance. We feel that we can make all our self-cleaning plastics commercially available within a few years,” Youngblood concludes.