How much do you know about the diverse uses of silica?

Silicon dioxide, a chemical substance, plays a key role in many fields. It is an important raw material for the manufacture of glass, water glass, and quartz glass. It also occupies a place in the electronics industry and the manufacture of optical fibers. In addition, silica is also an important raw material for the manufacture of optical instruments, handicrafts, and refractory materials. Next, let's explore these wide-ranging uses of silica together.

1. Application of fumed silica in plastics
Its excellent light transmittance and small particle size make plastics more dense. After adding silica to polystyrene plastic film, it not only significantly improves its transparency, strength and toughness, but also enhances its waterproof and anti-aging properties. In addition, only a small amount of fumed silica is needed to be added to ordinary plastic polyvinyl chloride to greatly improve the hardness, finish and anti-aging properties of the produced plastic steel doors and windows.

2. Coatings
The application of  silica in coatings has significantly improved the performance of this nano-modified coating. After testing, among its various indicators, except for the contrast ratio, other properties such as washability, weather resistance, bonding strength between the coating and the wall, and coating hardness have been greatly improved. For example, the washability of the exterior wall paint has been increased from more than 1,000 to more than 10,000, and the artificial accelerated climate aging and artificial radiation exposure aging time have been extended from the original 250 hours (powdering level 1, discoloration level 2) to 600 hours (no powdering, no discoloration of the paint film, color difference value 4.8). At the same time, the surface self-cleaning ability of the coating has also been effectively improved.

3. Rubber
Adding a trace amount of  silica to ordinary rubber can significantly improve its strength, wear resistance and aging resistance, making its performance comparable to or even surpassing that of high-grade rubber products, while ensuring long-term color stability. In addition, the colored EPDM waterproof membrane modified by nanotechnology shows significant improvement in wear resistance, tensile strength, folding resistance and aging resistance, and the colors are bright and eye-catching, with excellent color retention.

4. Ceramics
By introducing silica into ceramics to replace the original fumed alumina, the advantages of nanoparticles can be brought into play. This substitution not only enhances the strength and toughness of the ceramic, but also significantly improves its hardness and elastic modulus, and the optimization effect even exceeds the case of adding alumina alone.

5. Dyes
The surface modification of dyes using silica significantly improves the anti-aging properties of dyes. At the same time, this treatment also improves the brightness, hue and saturation of dyes to a certain extent, and its performance is comparable to imported high-end products, thereby greatly expanding the application field and grade of dyes.

6. Resin composites
By finely and evenly mixing fumed silica particles into resin materials, the overall performance of resin-based materials can be significantly improved. This includes enhancing the strength and elongation of the material, improving wear resistance, and improving the smoothness of the material surface. In addition, this method can effectively improve the anti-aging properties of resin composites and further broaden their scope of application.

7. Strengthening of glass products
Glass fiber reinforced plastic products are known for their light weight, high strength and corrosion resistance, but their hardness is relatively low and their wear resistance needs to be improved. By adding silica to the gel coat resin, its wear resistance can be significantly improved by 1 to 2 times. This is due to the grafting and bonding between nanoparticles and organic polymers, which not only enhances the toughness of the material, but also increases the tensile strength and impact strength by more than 1 times. At the same time, the heat resistance has also been greatly improved.

8. Application of electronic materials
By fully dispersing the surface-active silica in the silicone-modified epoxy resin encapsulation glue matrix, the curing time of the encapsulation material can be significantly shortened to only 2.0 to 2.5 hours, while reducing the curing temperature to room temperature. This improvement significantly improves the sealing performance of OELD devices, thereby extending their service life.

9. Application in the field of cosmetics
Silicon dioxide, as an inorganic ingredient, has good compatibility with other components in cosmetics and is non-toxic and odorless. Its white color makes coloring simple and easy. What is more worth mentioning is that fumed silica has strong ultraviolet reflection ability and excellent stability. Even if it is exposed to ultraviolet rays, it will not decompose, discolor or react chemically with other components in the formula. These excellent characteristics provide strong support for the improvement and upgrading of sunscreen cosmetics.

10. Antibacterial materials
By utilizing the huge specific surface area, rich surface mesoporous structure, excellent adsorption capacity and unique physical and chemical properties of fumed silica, we can evenly embed functional ions such as silver ions into the mesopores of fumed silica and maintain their stability. In this way, we have successfully developed a nano antibacterial powder that is efficient, long-lasting, high temperature resistant and has a broad-spectrum antibacterial effect.

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