Fabric Protection – How does Liquid Glass Shield Work?
Fabric Protection. That’s almost a contradiction in terms because, until now, it’s been very difficult to find anything that’s, particularly, effective when it comes to protecting our most precious fabric items.
And then there was Liquid Glass Shield fabric protection.
Before I explain what Liquid Glass Shield does to protect such fabrics, take a look at the following video. The raw footage was sent to us by a customer after we treated the baize cover on a snooker table. Needless to say, they were enormously impressed = and you will be, too, when you see what they filmed. (We have done a quick edit to make the video shorter and add a voice over – but, absolutely, no camera trickery has been employed. What you’re about to see is, exactly, what was filmed.)
Fabric Protection – The Snooker Table Test
It’s, quite simply, astounding to see, isn’t it?
Fabric Protection – How Does Liquid Glass Shield Work?
Liquid Glass Shield is a nano coating of pure glass. Being 500 time thinner than a human hair, it’s remarkably flexible (it has 200% flexibility). This means that it can be used on soft surfaces like carpets, fabrics and upholstery without affecting how they look or feel.
One of the most important properties that Liquid Glass Shield has, when it comes to fabric protection, is that it’s ‘Superphobic’. This, simply, means that nothing readily sticks to it.
However, the coating isn’t solid, in that it has gaps between its molecules. Although gases can pass through these gaps (allowing any coated surface to breathe) the gaps are too small for solids and liquids to pass through.
Once a fabric has been coated with Liquid Glass Shield (in this case the baize covering on the snooker table), any spilled liquids can’t penetrate through the Liquid Glass Shield nano coating to the fabric fibres, themselves, which means that the liquids can’t be absorbed in to the fibres.
Normally, the act of the fibres absorbing the liquids creates a greater ‘sticking’ force than the natural surface tension that exists in all liquids. When Liquid Glass Shield is used to provide fabric protection, the liquid can’t stick to the fibres or the coating. This means that the surface tension in the liquid is the greater force.
The effect of this, as you’ll have seen in the video, is the amazing way that the liquids behave on this ‘Superphobic’ surface.
Actually, liquids behave in this way all of the time but, because there are little or no external sticking forces from the fabric surface, the natural properties of liquids are greatly exaggerated.
I’ve tried to make this explanation as non-technical as possible and I’ve included links to Wikipedia to get a greater understanding of, exactly, what surface tension is. Anyway, I hope it all makes sense.
