The Korean Society of Surface Science and Engineering

The night visibility of pavement is being considered as a global issue in the field of traffic safety. Although the spreading glass beads on the lane paints has been mainly used to secure night-visibility by utilizing the effect of retroreflection, obvious shortcoming of this method is that retroflection does not occur in the range where the headlights do not reach the glass beads. The use of functional paints including phosphorescent constituents could be a solution for overcoming fore-mentioned problem. SrAl₂O₄ based chemicals have not only good phosphorescent property, but also are chemically stable compared to existing ZnS based materials. However, this chemicals also need the improvement due to slightly reduced luminous effect in time. Herein, we developed novel paints showing enhanced phosphorescent properties by putting rare earth elements such as Eu, Dy and Y into SrAl₂O₄. These prepared phosphorescent pigments have displayed improved properties in terms of durability and long afterglow. For instance, the property of afterglow has been persisted after 5 hours with luminace of 20.6 mcd/m².

Keywords Phosphorescent paint; After-glow; Night visibility; Eco-friendly paint.