Advantages of self-cleaning glass and current status of technological development

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With the development of the industrial economy, environmental pollution has become an increasingly serious and prominent issue in China. According to estimates by world authorities, China has the worst environmental pollution problems in the world; half of the 20 cities with the most severe air pollution globally are in China. Environmental protection has thus become an urgent priority. A clean and bright living environment is one of the most basic requirements for human life. Thus, self-cleaning technologies emerged, with self-cleaning glass being a representative application. Glass, this traditional transparent building material, is widely used in modern construction, the automotive industry, and households. As air pollution worsens, cleaning it has become increasingly difficult. Self-cleaning glass is a new type of functional building glass introduced to address the above problems. It addresses the aforementioned problems by coating a doped TiO2 film on a smooth glass surface, thus making significant contributions to reducing air pollution. Photocatalysts for heterogeneous photocatalytic oxidation reactions are often chalcogenide semiconductors. We chose TiO2 because it is non-toxic, insoluble, has good photocatalytic activity, and is low in cost. TiO2 films possess several advantages over other oxide films. (1) TiO2 films have high impedance and refractive index. (2) It has stable chemical properties and can resist the degradation caused by media and optoelectronic films. (3) It exhibits good photocatalytic and other properties in the visible light range. Self-cleaning glass is a new type of functional chemical material in which nanoxide films or composite films made of various compounds are created on the surface of glass using a specialized coating process. Research on self-cleaning glass began internationally in the 1970s; Fujishisc discovered the photocatalytic properties of TiO2, which has since found wide applications in pollutant degradation, water treatment, antibacterial and antifungal effects, and environmental protection. In the 1990s, abroad, TiO2 films were applied to glass surfaces to create self-cleaning glass. This type of glass has the capabilities to degrade pollutants, resist bacteria and fungi, and clean itself. After it was displayed as car windshields at the Tokyo Auto Show, companies began to produce it in bulk. In China, it gained widespread attention from colleges, universities, and research institutions in the mid-1990s, sparking a surge in research on self-cleaning glass. In recent years, research on self-cleaning glass both domestically and internationally has focused on aspects such as its preparation methods, photocatalytic reactions and antibacterial mechanisms, improvements to photocatalytic reactions and antibacterial efficacy, as well as its practical applications. Generally, the main steps involved include slide cleaning, film preparation, and performance characterization. This post was last edited by hw197358 on 2009-4-3 20:36.]