Anti-reflective glass

Anti-Reflective Glass – When Reflections Cause Trouble

Anti-reflective glass, or anti-glare glass, is the solution for customers experiencing problems with glare in glass. This ranges from businesses that use screens in environments where glare or reflections disrupt work, to museums needing glass that not only protects but also allows visitors to view the artworks clearly.

Depending on the purpose, two different technologies are used to eliminate light reflections in glass. Anti-reflective glass reduces light glare by coating the glass, while anti-glare technology is based on finely etching the glass so that it cannot reflect light or surroundings.

Typically, when the business or industrial sector needs glass, it’s for a practical purpose. And while sunshine can be delightful and a picturesque sight to see busy production illuminated by projector lights and welding processes, it’s a completely different issue to work at a screen or control panel in these surroundings. Here, anti-reflective glass or anti-glare glass is the solution.

Anti-Glare and Anti-Reflective Glass: The Sensible Business Solution for Safety and Efficiency. The use of the right glass can dramatically improve the work environment, ensuring that production managers have a clear overview and can monitor the quality of production on their screens. The right glass without disturbing reflections on the screen means an employee can operate a machine both better and more efficiently.

We all know the problem from our PC screens, when reflective light makes it difficult to see properly and maintain productivity. The right glass can make a difference and reduce the annoyance of reflections from the screen.

At the other end of the spectrum are museums and luxury stores that need glass to both protect artworks or luxury items, while also allowing guests a clear, reflection-free view of them. The ideal glass in a museum is invisible and free from disturbing reflections that ruin the museum experience. That’s why many museums use coated anti-reflective glass, which eliminates reflections, filters out harmful UV light, and protects the artifacts. It’s glass where the coating ensures incredibly good light transmission, and at the same time, ensures that one can see through the glass without being disturbed by reflections, both from a short and long distance.

The Solution Must Fit the Task

A glass solution must always be tailored to the problem. When it comes to anti-glare and anti-reflective glass, there are different glasses with different properties, where the task often dictates the choice of glass.

At Mirit Glas, we have extensive experience in processing anti-glare or anti-reflective glass that suits the purpose. This could be glass for information stands or control screens that need to be operable in challenging environments.

It can also be glass used for displaying items, and in many cases, protect these items from UV light. Or it could be glass that needs to function in front of cameras or other types of optical sensors.

Therefore, there can be different recommendations for which type of glass to choose to solve the problem.

Overall, we distinguish between two types of glass when processing glass where reflections need to be avoided. These two types of glass are made differently and have different advantages and disadvantages.

The two types of glass are fundamentally different in terms of the technology used to remove glare and reflections. One method involves reducing glare by coating the glass, while the other technology involves etching the glass very finely so that there are no flat surfaces that can reflect light or surroundings. A significant difference between the types is that the etched anti-glare is harder to scratch than the coated anti-reflective.

At the same time, there are many variants within these two types of glass. Therefore, it is important to consider the purpose.

Anti-Reflective Glass

When talking about anti-reflective glass, it refers to a property achieved by coating the glass. This means that an anti-reflective coating is applied on top of the glass, which reduces reflections and surface glare. The coating can also filter certain wavelengths. Often, the coating consists of multiple layers, with thickness measured in nanometers.

The idea of coating glass with a thin film originated in 1886 with the English physicist and Nobel laureate Lord Rayleigh. During his experiments and studies on how light behaves, he discovered that a dirty coating on top of glass reduced reflections while allowing more light to pass through the glass. This led to a series of theories about optics, which have since been sophisticated and led to the ability to make glass with incredible properties by coating it.

A coating can improve the properties of glass and, for example, increase light transmission up to more than 98%. The glass will appear almost invisible.
Anti-reflective glass is typically coated on both sides, as it is easiest to coat glass by dipping the pane in liquid. However, in some cases, a vacuum chamber is used to coat only one side, or to coat the glass with different coatings on each side – which provides the opportunity to add more sophisticated and targeted properties to the glass.

Many varieties of coated glass are called museum glass, but – at least in relation to many of Mirit Glas’ customers – this gives a somewhat misleading picture of who can benefit from the glass.

Because we at Mirit Glas specialize in providing tailor-made solutions for industry and business, we have a number of customers who need anti-reflective glass for entirely different reasons than displaying and showcasing artworks and products.

For although it is true that museums and stores with expensive luxury products use anti-reflective glass to create the best experience of artworks, jewelry, and other products, anti-reflective glass is also often used in industrial and business solutions. Here, the coating is frequently more complex and adapted to a practical purpose.

An example could be visual systems where anti-reflective glass is crucial to ensure the image quality is high enough to prevent faulty production or incorrect measurements. Anti-reflective is not only used in industrial systems but also in standalone camera solutions where there are high demands for light sensitivity and in some situations even combined with secondary coatings that block certain parts of the light spectrum.

A similar segment of customers also uses anti-reflective glass to protect screens where there are high demands for resolution, color spectrum, and contrasts. This could be in medical, technical, and media environments, which need the best possible conditions to perform their work.

There are also customers who need to upgrade traditional screen and information stand solutions so that they can function smoothly in challenging environments. For example, touchscreens, where the normally good solutions are just not good enough.

A more common use of anti-reflective glass is simple or advanced picture frames for museums, which want to protect paintings and older art or cultural objects – often spiced with a coating that blocks destructive UV light. The same purpose is served by jewelers, luxury stores, or others who need to display goods in an environment where the glass should not disturb.

When Mirit Glas’ customers choose a solution with anti-reflective glass, it is often because they can see a business advantage. They are professional customers who, either for practical or scientific reasons, need that very specific quality, or customers who see a competitive advantage clearly offset by the investment in getting anti-reflective glass, which may even have a double coating, giving the glass further adapted properties. This could be the filtering of UV, but it can also be other specific properties, such as optimizing certain wavelengths in the visible range or even in the infrared light space (IR).

Anti-reflective glass is the glass for the demanding customer.

Anti-Glare Glass

While anti-reflective glass uses a coating to remove reflections, the technology behind anti-glare glass is entirely different. To eliminate reflections, anti-glare glass does not use a coating; instead, the glass is lightly etched on the surface.

The etching creates tiny differences in the surface of the glass, meaning there is no flat surface to reflect light, yet without compromising the glass’s ability to transmit light. Anti-glare glass typically allows the same amount of light through as regular glass, which is about 92%.

Like anti-reflective glass, etched anti-glare glass comes in many varieties with different properties, tailored for various purposes.

In a business context, anti-glare glass is generally a more versatile solution to light reflection issues than anti-reflective glass, because it can be used in many more contexts – including in production environments where oil from fingers may come into contact with the glass. At the same time, anti-glare glass is typically more resistant to scratches compared to coated anti-reflective glass.

Customers typically choose etched anti-glare when creating touch solutions in a production environment where dirt and contact with dirty fingers are unavoidable. In such environments, there are also typically many different uncontrollable light sources, and the glass is at risk of being scratched.

Anti-glare glass is not only used to protect screens. For example, it is also used in lighting solutions. The etched anti-glare glass can also be used to diffuse light. It can be mounted to shield a lamp, and in some solutions, it is used directly as lamp glass. Anti-glare glass is produced in many different qualities, depending on what the glass will be used for. If the glass is used for a lamp, transparency is not important as long as as much light as possible is transmitted through the glass.

On the other hand, if the glass is used to protect a touch screen in a production environment, an etched glass is used, which has high transparency and clearly reproduces colors when in close contact with the screen.

The roughness of the etching often matters for how best to use the glass. The coarser the etching (greater roughness), the more diffuse the light transmission. Therefore, Mirit Glas always works with different categories of ‘roughness’ when choosing the glass that fits our customers’ solutions.

This is why industrial customers typically choose Anti-glare glass.

Anti-glare glass has universal application possibilities. Typically, anti-glare glass is used in front of screens, for displays, medical instruments, or touch screens. It can also be used for arcade game machines and small LED displays.
Also outdoors, anti-glare glass is a popular choice for protecting, for example, monitors and information stands. Simply because anti-glare glass is the practical, sensible, and often economically best solution.

Anti-glare glass effectively reduces reflections and glare, thanks to a surface that has been delicately etched. The degree of etching varies from subtle to more pronounced. Generally, approximately 92% of all light is transmitted through the glass, similar to standard window glass. Consequently, about 8% of the light is diffused in reflection, while less than 1% is absorbed by the glass.

Anti-reflective glass is glass that is coated with a thin film, ensuring that light does not reflect back from the glass, but instead passes through it. This means that anti-reflective glass allows more than 98 percent of light to pass through, and with special coatings, up to more than 99%.

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