Why is hydrophobic glass better than hydrophilic glass?
Yakov Jacobson / July 24, 2017 / Industry News
Hydrophobic Coating
Hydrophobic glass is not different from normal glass in terms of making. The only thing that distinguishes it from other glass is the hydrophobic coating. These days, many talks about the importance of hydrophobic coating in camera lenses, port window glass, etc., have popped up. The most common question asked here is what makes hydrophobic glass superior to common glass. Here, we will look a few things that separate hydrophobic coated glass from other glass types.
Glass Coating Types
Glass coating is generally divided in two types: hydrophobic and hydrophilic. As the name indicates, hydrophobic coating is water resistant and hydrophilic coating is water compliant. And both types of coatings are used in camera lens, port window glass, etc.
Benefits Of Hydrophobic Coating In Glass
To understand the advantageous side of hydrophobic coating, it is important to realize how water droplets affect or intervene with the glass surface. When water falls on an object that is hydrophilic in nature, the angle of its contact point will turn to zero degree. On the contrary, this does not happen with hydrophobic material or glass because it deflects water, and thus, water drains away.
This hydrophobic nature also helps keeping off dust from the surface of the glass. Latest camera lenses and port windows use glass with hydrophobic coating due to this very feature, and so the final image is more lively and clear in such settings.
Lenses With Hydrophobic Coating Help Shooting In Wet Condition
Moviemakers have to shoot in all weather conditions for the originality of the scenes. Until recently, they couldn’t do it because their camera lenses were made of hydrophilic glass. But modern camera lenses are made of hydrophobic glass, which helps movie makers to shoot films under any weather, even in wet or rainy conditions. The pouring rain or humid climate does not affect the picture or visual quality at all.
Hydrophobic Glass Properties
Super-Hydrophobic Coating
The benefits of the hydrophobic coating have prompted the experts in the industry to do more research about how to improve it. As such, they have developed the concept super-hydrophobic coating. They believe that super-hydrophobic coating will have more applications and perfection in various industries such as movie making and photo shooting.
Super-hydrophobic coating offers outstanding level of transparency. They can be added with extra features such as ultraviolet radiation resistance and abrasion resistance. With their high-end performance, they will certainly dominate the optical industry in the coming days.
That was on how hydrophobic glass varies from ordinary glass types. Get in touch with our experts for more info on various glass types and their applications.