In 1950, Dr. Dong Qifang, a Chinese American scientist, developed directional glass beads, and then developed a series of reflective materials such as reflective cloth. In 1968, the American ROWLAND brothers invented and registered the micro prism retroreflection technology.
Reflective film products were first developed successfully by 3M Company in the United States. So far, only a few countries such as the United States, Japan, China, and South Korea can produce reflective film products. The reflective film has been used in developed countries for a long time. Its excellent optical properties and excellent social Economic value has been widely recognized and accepted.
Similarly, this has also attracted the full attention of many scientific and technological workers in the field of optics and traffic safety in China. In the 1970s, Mr. Yang Yonggang from the Optical Department of the Chinese Academy of Metrology introduced technical documents such as the structural principle, optical characteristics, and performance testing of the directional reflective film to China. Subsequently, many scientific research institutes and colleges, and universities have successively invested in the series of reflective film products. research and development.
For example, scientific research units such as the Highway Science Research Institute of the Ministry of Communications and the Institute of Optics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have organized experts and special funds, established key research teams, and carried out project research. These early experts and research staff devoted a lot of effort to reflective materials and achieved certain staged results.
The basic production process principle, but under the conditions at that time, due to the weakness of chemical and other basic industries, special coatings, glass beads, and other raw materials could not be solved, and there was no stereotyped production equipment, which limited the use of reflective materials under certain conditions the process of industrialization.
In the 1980s, we began to develop high-refractive-index glass beads, which gradually solved the most important raw material for the development of reflective films, laying the foundation for the localization of reflective materials in China.
Later, in the 1990s, the domestic micro-bead transparent reflective materials made great progress and developed advertising-grade reflective films, engineering-grade reflective films, high-strength reflective films, and other embedded reflective materials with micro-beads. At the same time, reflective cloth, reflective leather, reflective fuse, and reflective thermal film have also been launched one after another. By the 1990s, non-glass microbead products were basically mature in China, and in this industry, such as Huarisheng, Daoming, Jingli, etc. were relatively large-scale. 's enterprises.
However, another type of reflective material, that is, the reflective material of micro prism, is still in its infancy in China. It was only developed by a few shoe material companies in Jinjiang, Fujian, in the early 2000s. After several years of evolution, although the quality of the product has improved, it still remains in the most primitive production method of intermittent production. The world's manufacturers of such products are basically On the implementation of continuous production.
Another is that the core technology is the research and development of the original mold, which is basically in a blank state. Although not much progress has been made in the development of core technologies, several manufacturers have successively launched a new form of product - reflective inkjet cloth. The introduction of reflective inkjet cloth has developed a new market for reflective materials - the advertising market.
