A Brief History of the Development of Reflective Materials

In 1950, Dr. Dong Qifang, a Chinese American scientist, developed directional glass microspheres, followed by a series of reflective materials such as reflective cloth. In 1968, the ROWLAND brothers in the United States invented and registered micro prism retroreflection technology. Reflective film products were first developed and successfully developed by 3M Company in the United States. Currently, only a few countries such as the United States, Japan, China, and South Korea are able to produce them. Reflective film has been in long-term use in developed countries, and its excellent optical properties and outstanding socio-economic value have 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, Professor Yang Yonggang from the Optics Department of the Chinese Academy of Metrology introduced technical literature on the structural principles, optical characteristics, and performance testing of directional reflective films to China. Subsequently, many research institutes and colleges successively invested in the research and development of reflective film series products. For example, the Research Institute of Highway Science of the Ministry of Communications, the Institute of Optics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other scientific research institutions have organized experts and special funds, set up a research team, and carried out project research. These early experts and research staff put a lot of effort into reflective materials and achieved certain phased results. They basically explored the basic production process principle of reflective material microbeads through reflection schematic diagram. However, under the conditions at that time, due to the weakness of basic industries such as chemical engineering, specialized raw materials such as coatings and glass microbeads could not be solved, and there was no standardized production equipment, The industrialization process of reflective materials has been restricted to some extent.

In the 1980s, Zhejiang Taizhou Reflective Materials Company began to develop high refractive index glass microspheres, gradually solving the problem of developing an important raw material for reflective films, laying the foundation for the localization of reflective materials in China. In the 1990s, significant progress was made in the development of micro bead transparent reflective materials in China, including advertising grade reflective film, engineering grade reflective film, high-strength grade reflective film, and other micro bead embedded reflective materials. At the same time, reflective cloth, reflective leather, reflective fuse, and reflective heat transfer film were also launched. By the 1990s, glass micro bead products had basically matured in China, forming industries like Huarisheng, Daoming, and Enterprises with relatively large scale such as Jingli.

However, in China, another type of reflective material, micro prism reflective material, is still in its infancy. It was not until around the early 2020s that several shoe material enterprises in Jinjiang, Fujian Province, accidentally developed reflective lattice sheets for civilian use in micro prism lenses. After several years of evolution, although the quality of the products has improved, they still remain in the original intermittent production mode, The manufacturers of such products in the world basically implement continuous production. Another key technology is the development of original molds, which is basically in a blank state. Although there has not been much progress in the development of core technologies, several manufacturers such as Xinliyuan have successively launched a new form of product - reflective inkjet fabric. The launch of reflective inkjet fabric has opened up a new market for reflective materials - the advertising market.