More and more thin, strong, elastic and easy to decorate, micro plastic films open new creative horizons.

Polymeric micro films are now widespread in many areas, such as furniture, construction, protective products, automotive, food, packaging and many other fields.

The formulation and production technology achieved by these laminates is allowing the exaltation of design and marketing through the transformation of products, not only from an aesthetic point of view, but also of technical performance.

Actually in our imagination we place them in a recent time frame, but these thin plastic laminates can be dated to 1939, when they were first used as elements reflective in road signs.

The applications, as we have seen, are really numerous and updated year after year, such as the films on the lenses of the glasses or on the visors of the helmets, times with writings on the outside that do not prevent you from seeing correctly from the inside.

We can also mention the PVB films made with ink jet printing to be sandwiched between two glasses, so that the images become eternal as they are protected from glasses.

Also interesting are the films for the preservation of food that can be purchased at the supermarket, there are those detectors, capable of highlighting deterioration or detecting the presence of GMOs.

In the construction sector, for a long time now, polymeric films have been used to apply to glass to improve safety, reduce solar radiation that causes transmission of heat inside the premises with undoubted energy savings, reduce the refraction of light in order to darken the environments and shielded films able to reduce the introduction of more than 90% of electromagnetic waves inside the premises.

In the field of safety, there are films composed of dozens of layers of very thin polyester, which are used to reduce the consequences of explosions. In fact, the elasticity that these polyester layers give to the glass, thanks to their elongation which can reach 150%, help the glass to better withstand the shock wave of an explosion.

In the field of lighting and electronics, these micro films are designed to optimize the brightness of mobile phones, screens, computers, and for the transport of light itself .

There are films on the market capable of reflecting or transmitting different wavelengths of light in the visible and infrared spectrum, consisting of hundreds of polymeric layers whose thickness they are of the order of a luminous wavelength.

In these fields the science of physics of adjacent surfaces has made it possible to advance the technique of micro replication, the continuous repetition millions of times of a 3D microstructure consisting of tiny prisms or infinitesimal spheres invisible to the naked eye, which allows the creation of regular surfaces with specific properties, such as capturing the sunlight from different angles and distributing it inwards, or reflecting it totally outwards.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.