According to an article on phys.org, newly developed titanium oxide nanoparticles can be added to paints to clean not only the air in the room but also the walls themselves.
A team of researchers from the Technical University of Vienna (also known as the Vienna University of Technology) and the Technical University of Marche in Italy developed the nanoparticles. When added to regular paint, nanoparticles harness sunlight to activate the paint's self-cleaning properties.
According to the article, the nanoparticles bind to substances in the air and then break them down. Therefore, painted walls can not only purify the air, but also the walls themselves.
In doing so, the walls remove pollutants from indoor air, improving indoor air quality (IAQ) and reducing “sick building syndrome,” a situation in which poor air quality affects the health of building occupants. Helps fight.
“People have been trying to use customized wall paints to clean the air for years,” Günther Rupprechter, professor at the Institute of Materials Chemistry at the Vienna University of Technology, told phys.org. “Titanium oxide nanoparticles are of particular interest in this context. They can bind and degrade a wide range of pollutants.”
Studies show that using this technology, 96% of air and wall pollutants can be removed using sunlight alone.
“We have now investigated this phenomenon in detail using a variety of surface and nanoparticle analysis methods,” Qaisar Maqbool, one of the study authors, told phys.org. “This way we were able to show exactly how these particles behave before and after they are added to the wall paint.”
According to the article, further research is planned with the goal of eventually producing a commercially available paint. Click here to see research on this technology.
