Fog-Free Glass

Reported January 2006

BOSTON (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- If you're all fogged up, a new discovery may have you seeing more clearly. Fog is not just a weather nuisance for drivers; it can cause problems just about everywhere. Now, a new anti-fog glass coating is clearing the way for consumers.

Your bathroom mirror, eyeglasses, and your car windshield all fall victim to fog. It can happen anywhere moisture condenses on a cool surface.

Michael Rubner, Ph.D., a materials chemist and professor of Polymer Material Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, says, "When they condense they are just the right size to scatter light. If light gets scattered you can't see through those glasses anymore."

Michael created a polymer coating, made from different materials that transform the opaque droplets of water into a transparent sheet. "All of the process that we use to create these coatings is done with water," he says.

The process begins by dipping the glass into a solution of negatively charged tiny glass particle. After, it's dipped into another solution with positively charged polymers. Michael says: "We're forming what we call nanopores. The pores are so small that you can't see them with your eyes. They don't scatter light. But they're large enough so that when you put a drop of water onto the surface, it's drawn into those pores and spread across the surface instantaneously."

The effect allows you to continue seeing clearly through the piece of coated glass. This not only helps you at home, but even the military is looking for fog-free glass. Thomas Long, from Fosta-Tek Optics in Leominster, Mass., says, "The soldiers are faced with either having a foggy field of vision or taking those glasses off to improve their vision, but then being vulnerable to fragments of shrapnel ending their eyesight."

Michael says his coating promises to be long lasting for soldiers out in the field and to drivers just trying to see their way home. He's trying to find a cost-effective way to mass market the polymer coating and hopes it will be available in the next few years.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Dr. Michael Rubner
MIT Center for Material Science and Engineering
rubner@mit.edu
http://web.mit.edu/cmse/www

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