Development at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research and the Forschungsgemeinschaft Technik und Glas creates printing inks for glass with no toxic elements.
Whether on baby bottles, beer mugs or perfume bottles, imprints on glass consist mainly of lead oxide. Soon an EU Directive will ban the potentially unhealthy lead oxide from logos. A new development by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Würzburg, Germany and the Forschungsgemeinschaft Technik und Glas e.V. FTG addresses this issue.
Jointly, the researchers have developed printing inks for glass that do not contain any toxic elements.
“We have developed lead oxide free decorative paints, which do perfectly well without toxic substances,” says Anika Deinhardt, researcher at the ISC. “They are easy to process, have high colour brilliance and are chemically resistant. In addition, they do not contain any rare or expensive elements.”
The basis of these novel decorative paints is a glass that consists mainly of zinc oxide. Further constituents are aluminum oxide, boron oxide and silicon dioxide.
At the glasstec trade fair from October 21 to 24 in Düsseldorf (Hall 15, Booth A33), Fraunhofer will present the lead-free imprints, along with samples.