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Gas to liquid could be the answer for po... Web will be part of life for new genera... Window washers could be out of a jo... Lost in the deepening chasm of... |
Window washers could be out of a jobJAPANESE engineers in Tokyo said this week they had come up with a unique way to make windows self-cleaning . Akira Fujishima of the University of Tokyo and colleagues developed a way to coat glass with a thin crystalline coating of titanium oxide - a white paste commonly used in plastics, paints and cosmetics. "The result is a titanium oxide-coated glass which is anti-fogging and self-cleaning," they wrote in a report in the science journal Nature. When illuminated with ultraviolet light, the titanium oxide (also known as titanium dioxide) becomes attractive to both oil and water. Either spreads instantly over the surface of glass coated with the treated chemical. The spreading means that droplets do not form, in effect producing an antifogging surface. The ultraviolet radiation in sunshine is enough to do the trick, Fujishima's group said. Any dirt that accumulates on the window is washed away by rain, they added. Titanium is a mineral sands byproduct and is produced at both Richards Bay Minerals's and Anglo American mines on the SA coast. - Reuter
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