An anti-fog treatment contains hydrophilic ingredients, that is, "water-loving." They want to absorb water and spread it evenly over a coated surface. It keeps water droplets from becoming big enough to be visible, or, in other words, big enough to be visible, or, in other words, big enough to be seen as fog. I know, this is exactly opposite what you've learned for the hydrophobic surfaces of premium AR lenses and the way that they've been described as easy cleaning. But it's possible to have both.

So what's the problem?
The formula does not contain the correct or the proper levels of water-loving ingredients. More hydrophilics can and do absorb more moisture. But there's another factor that may be even more important.

The anti-fog never bonds to the lens. Some anti-fog treatments are formulated to "stick" more tightly to the lens surface, so it takes more moisture to wash them away. Polycarbonate lenses found in safety glasses and safety goggles, especially prescription lenses, also have coatings on them, such as anti-glare, anti-scratch or easy clean. All of these surfaces are hydrophobic, or "water-hating". It's not easy to get a "water-loving" hydrophilic coating to adhere to them. In scientific terms, the lenses have low surface energy. A coating, like anti-fog, generally has a higher surface energy and doesn't bond strongly to low surface energy. To get the anti-fog to bond, surface-active agents must be added to the formula to lower the surface energy level. Now let's complicate the problem even more.

The anti-fog isn't matched to the lens material. There are dozens of different lens materials and coatings used on prescription and protective eyewear, each with its own surface energy level. The surface-active agents that promote bonding to one may not solve the problem on another.

Defog It from Nanofilm's research chemists have found that you can't get top performance from an anti-fog with just a few agents to reduce the surface energy of other coatings. There are so many lens materials used in eyewear that a narrow chemistry will work on one but not another. The solution is to formulate a synergistic blend of agents with different surface energies that work together to bridge the wide variety of lenses – and surface energies -- in the market. Water droplets never get large enough to produce "fog."

TESTING AND DEMONSTRATING ANTI-FOG

  • Select samples of your favorite coatings and lens material products. Remember, each manufacturer and lab prepares lenses with their own formula's for scratch and AR coatings
  • Apply anti fog to one lens and leave the other bare
  • Hold the protective eyewear over a pot of boiling water for 30 seconds
  • The absence of fog on the Defog It coated lens, demonstrates the advantage

To simulate moving from cold to hot environments (Florida air conditioning to outdoors in summer)

  • Select samples of your favorite coatings and lens material products. Remember, each manufacturer and lab prepares lenses with their own formula's for scratch and AR coatings
  • Apply anti fog to one lens and leave the other bare
  • Place the eyewear in the freezer for 5 minutes
  • Remove from freezer, breathe on the lenses
  • Repeat 2 or 3 times
  • The fog on the bare lens, means problems in the real world, the Defog It lens demonstrates the advantage

QUESTIONS FOR PATIENTS
Do you have problems with fogged lenses at work or when doing everyday activities? If so, I have a real solution for you.

Tell me about your work? Fogged lenses aren't safe. I have a real solution for you. Do you do...
Utility Work: "You'll be shocked that when working in 100+ degree temperatures in a power plant boiler your glasses won't fog up."
Construction: "You won't have to deal with squinting through foggy lenses."
HVAC: "Are you in and out of buildings and vehicles all day. Without anti-fog on your safety glasses, you'll have to stop to fix it."
Paper mill: "You could be going from a very cold room of about 68o directly to the dryer hoods of about 145o, without fogging."
Law enforcement: "Consider the next SWAT exercise… imagine not experience any fog when moving from outside the building to inside the building even in full gear."