Imagine never having to clean your glasses again.
An inventor at UWM’s College of Engineering & Applied Science has developed a self-cleaning coating that could be applied to commercial products, including eyeglasses, building glass and car windshields.
Junjie Niu, Richard and Joanne Grigg associate professor, materials science & engineering, was issued a U.S. patent in November for the technology, called 3D hybrid composite coating.
“It’s a super-hydrophobic coating,” Niu says. “When it gets wet, it activates and repels water and prevents particles from adhering to the surface.”
In addition to reducing the need for cleaning, the coating could reduce water consumption—in public urinals, for example—and prolong the life of products such as pipelines and sensors that are at risk of corrosion.
Decreasing consumption of energy and water are goals
At UWM, Niu and his 10-person research team have partnered with many Milwaukee-area companies in the past few years on several projects with the goals of decreasing energy consumption and decontaminating drinking water and water that is discharged from sewage lines into the environment.
In the past five years, he has been awarded more than $2.5 million in grants—from federal agencies, local agencies and industries—for research in these areas.
“Worldwide, energy conservation and clean water are the big topics of our time,” says Niu. “My background is interdisciplinary and I combine chemistry, physics and materials science in my research.”
His research on self-cleaning coatings has been supported by Sloan Valve, the Water Equipment and Policy (WEP) Research Center, and the University of Wisconsin System.