KleanBoost Coating for Glass

ARLD technology offers these key advantages: Resistance to mechanical scratching and abrasion, maintaining their self-cleaning properties after thousands of cycles as tested using a Taber reciprocating abraser. Chemically stable surfaces. Properties are maintained after exposure to solutions including 4% alkali and boiling water. Only non‐toxic, non-volatile and low-flammability materials are used. Surfaces can be rinsed with water at high flow rates for long times and remain dry. Surfaces are not wetted when submerged in water under high pressure. Roll-to-roll processing scales up directly to industrial production

ARLD’s transparent superhydrophobic coatings for glass or polymer films are dual function:  anti-reflective and anti-soiling properties together in one coating.  Properties can be tailored by controlling the polymer processing conditions. Anti-reflectivity has been demonstrated over an angle range that is more extensive than competing technologies. 
Anti-reflective coatings are becoming standard on solar panels, though many are vulnerable to soiling and to damage during cleaning operations. Our coating has proved to be very robust under harsh conditions, surviving the equivalent of 30 years of rain and nine hours of alkali solution immersion.  Our transparent coating has also demonstrated remarkable anti-soiling (i.e. self-cleaning) behavior, requiring only small amounts of rain or dew to clean dust cover effectively. 
Most importantly, our dual-purpose coating technology is intrinsically low cost and processes are compatible with high-volume manufacturing.  The process is amenable to many polymer resins;  the one chosen for these PV studies has an index of refraction that is well matched to solar glass and is especially suited to long life, high UV applications.