Coating Promises Scratch-Proof CDs, DVDs, LCDs

13.7BillionYears writes "NewScientist reports that TDK has developed a transparent polymer for LCD screens and optical media that is impervious to general neglect and abuse. Quoth the reporter, 'In one of the most convincing technology demonstrations this reporter has witnessed, I was handed a CD, a wire-wool pan scourer and some permanent marker pens, and invited to scratch or mark the discs. Hard as I tried, I could not make a single mark on the disc with the scourer. And the ink simply wiped off.' The coating is apparently responsible for Blu-Ray's new caddy-less form factor."

For cars too?

[fembots (753724)]

If this can be applied to cars when coming out of factory, it'll save a lot of 'disagreement' with supermarket trollies.

There's no mention of price, and more importantly, the ease of removal if this protective coating is somehow scratched. I find the current PDA sheet very difficult to remove (as if you're about to pull the LCD out).

And will record companies do more to prevent "backup" copies now that you simply can't scratch your CDs anymore??

Re:For cars too?

[Lumpy (12016)]

to hell with consumer uses.

why has this not been applied to aircraft? the plastic windows and canopies on aircraft are notorius for being super easy to scratch and always having some kind of scratches in them even when the utmost care is taken with them.

Hell, a car windshield made out of plastic would be far superior to the glass we have today. It would revolutionize the automotive industry in designs alone! a wrap around "jetsons" type of car would be possible.

Re:For cars too?

[Open_The_Box (620252)]

The aircraft thing is probably a good idea - depends how the coating responds to extremes of cold. The last thing you want is for your windows suddenly to turn opaque at 30000 feet. But, y'know, if it passes this basic test...

Plastic windows on your car... probably not such a great idea - the problem with car windows is that they are designed to shatter into tiny pieces rather than large jagged chunks that can rupture organs and generally shred the passengers in the event of a crash. Glass is cheap and does the job well. Cool as it would be to have wrap around windows, I reckon the auto companies will be unlikely to shell out the development cash.

Re:For cars too?

[CajunArson (465943)]

Dude... They already did that back in the 80's.
See, there was this guy who looked a lot like David Hasselhoff, and he had this sweet camaro dipped in this stuff that made it impervious to any attack. I think the car's name was KITT or something. Anyway, they had many interesting adventures but while KITT was never scratched on the outside, they never could get Hasselhoff's perma-whitefro shedding out of the upholstry.

Re:For cars too?

[karnal (22275)]

camaro

You mean Firebird, or more specifically, a Trans-Am. From what I remember reading, they had 13-some cars just in case they broke one... which did happen.

Did you ever notice that for the "car action" scenes, most of the footage was re-used ("turbo boost" stuff)...

I am somewhat sad at myself for still having a weak spot for a shiny black T/A - especially those model years. My friends call me white trash because of it.

Re:For cars too?

[jxs2151 (554138)]

...Sony-Ericsson released a similar plastic coating for the screen of their new phones...

So does that mean that I can take that plastic cover off now?

Re:For cars too?

[Woody77 (118089)]

Actually, what you're referring to is the side and rear windshield tempered safety-glass, which breaks into small squarish pieces with any sharp impact.

The windshield is actually layers of glass and a clear plastic, which holds the glass together as it shatters.

Safety glass breaks into cubes, but normal glass spiderwebs.

As a volunteer firefighter, and not only being trained on how to remove automotive glass expediently, but also having seen "forehead dents" in windshields (luckily no full-ejection of occupants out the windshield), I can attest to how it actually breaks.

BMW is putting Polycarbonate windows in the 740 series cars. You can't break those with a sledgehammer (I know someone who tried, our instructor on jaws of life tools).

Re:For cars too?

[System.out.println() (755533)]

Accidental microwavings
Well, accidental? I always microwave them on purpose.

2 Year olds
Apply the coating to condoms.

Scratches from the other side of the disk ;)
Apply the coating to the other side of the disk? (this answer is serious :P )

WRONG! The top is FAR more vulnerable to damage.

[Behrooz (302401)]

Most CD/DVDs are FAR more vulnerable to damage by being scratched through the top side. The bottom side has most of thickness of the disc (clear, resilient plastic) between the surface and the data medium. The actual information is stored on the backside of the substrate at the TOP of the disk, and even a shallow scratch through that will destroy data.

You can have a pretty massive scratch on the plastic side, and judicious application of nose grease and a high-quality reader will do just fine. Scratch the data layer, and you're screwed.

They can still texture the top side, but *that* is the side that requires the best protection you can get on it, either way.

Re:WRONG! The top is FAR more vulnerable to damage

[reconbot (456259)]

WRONG again. DVDs have the data in between two layers of plastic. So scratch the label as much as you want, it won't damage the data as long as you don't puncture the plastic.

Fun Tip: Nuke a DVD for a minute or two and the two plastic disks will slide apart. Double the frisbees double the fun. ;-)

Re:For cars too?

[stinkfoot (21610)]

> From what I've seen, they're already do as much as they possibly can.

...like filling most of them with material that isn't worth backing up...

Coasters?

[by Anonymous Coward]

But where am I going to get my coasters from then?

Re:Coasters?

[the_other_one (178565)]

AOL

Uh-oh..

[Mechcommander (784124)]

Indestructable AOL disks.. *Shivers*

Re:Uh-oh..

[Carnildo (712617)]

Indestructable AOL disks.. *Shivers*

I've heard people have good results with the application of Tesla coils to the problem.

Re:Uh-oh..

[Tablizer (95088)]

Indestructable AOL disks.. *Shivers*

No, Good! We then have free roofing "tiles" that last forever. You know how much roofing tiles cost?

Re:Uh-oh..

[pHatidic (163975)]

Mount Doom.

Hmm....

[JoeLinux (20366)]

I *ALWAYS* wondered why people whose buildings get tagged wouldn't spray teflon on the side of their building...now I will wonder why they don't use this stuff.

Sounds pretty cool

Joe

Re:Hmm....

[danlor (309557)]

You try spinning your building at 8000 RPM for the "spin application" process.

Re:Hmm....

[shigelojoe (590080)]

You try spinning your building at 8000 RPM for the "spin application" process.


There's a "screwing in a lightbulb" joke in there somewhere...

Re:Hmm....

[MyLongNickName (822545)]

What a stupid insight. I doubt I would fit in a lightbulb... much less my wife AND me.

slick bricks....

[ecalkin (468811)]

wouldn't it be kinda hard to build a building out of bricks that were coated with a non-stick substance? after all, mortar is designed to stick bricks together....

just a though!
eric

Re:Hmm....

[by Anonymous Coward]

I looked into anti-grafitti treatment for my fraternity house in Boston several years ago. Even targeting just the worst spot (~35x10ft brick wall) was excessively expensive compared to renting a sandblaster every three months and spending a Saturday morning cleaning it and paying for repegging the mortar every other year.

Granted, the level of grafitti problems we had were only only 'nuisance level', the cost of treating the wall astounded me. Even with the treatment we still would have had to rent a pressure washer to clean it and have to redo the teflon every few years. It was much cheaper to sandblast and repair the damage.

The teflon isn't really a miracle solution.

I wish I'd caught some asshole tagging the house, but it's probably best that I didn't...I got pretty angry over the thing. We did set up a camera for a while and gave the cops the video, but that had no noticable impact.

You are not 1337 enough

[cloudkj (685320)]

Give the CD and equipment to a 2-year old, and I'm sure the child will find a way to wreak death and destruction upon the CD.

Re:You are not 1337 enough

[Owndapan (789196)]

Slight correction: Give your most valuable data CD / favourite music CD / utterly irreplaceable CD and equipment to said 2-year old, and they will find a way to wreak said death and/or destruction upon the CD.

Kids are very discerning, they won't just break anything. It has to be important. Otherwise a large proportion of my collection could have been saved by keeping a stack of AOL's handy ;)

CD Rot

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

I wonder if they apply this coating as a complete shield, would it prevent CDs rotting?

Remember, theres two sides to every coating.

Re:CD Rot

[TheMediaWrangler (817300)]

Often, CD rot is due to poor evacuation of oxygen between the layers of the CD during manufacture. If the O2 is already present, a new coating won't help much.

Will this defeat the marker DRM exploit?

[NotQuiteReal (608241)]

No more marking the edge of CD to defeat the copy protection?

Dude, I want that coating

[geordieboy (515166)]

I would chew my own nuts off to get my hands on a Powerbook dipped in this shit

Re:Dude, I want that coating

[by Anonymous Coward]

I think that says something about the Mac userbase...

Re:Dude, I want that coating

[ColaMan (37550)]

Unix? Probably not even circumcised. Savages.

I want!

[RealAlaskan (576404)]

I want this for my plastics. I mean, my glasses with the plastic lenses which aren't quite as clear as they used to be. This would make life significantly better for all us glasses wearers!

I just wonder if it's antireflective, too?

Re:I want!

[riprjak (158717)]

See my post somewhere else here :)... Polymer opthalmic lenses have carried (or have had the option to carry, depending on how cheap you are) scratch resistant coatings for a VERY LONG time... Anti reflective coatings too, tho these are not chemical "films" applied as liquids (as per scratch resisiting) but are thin layers of metal applied using PVD (Physical Vapour Deposition).

Most of the "hazing" would be due to build up of oils or fluids leaching in from the exposed edges when they are cut for framing.

Of course, scratch resistant is NOT scratch proof. Not now, not ever.

Err!
jak.

Odd...

[Ibanez (37490)]

You'd think that if we had the capabilities to make something like this, it would have been done...

A coating that is (I assume) optically perfect enough to not mess up something as sensitive as the laser in a CD, and that durable, would be a boon for a huge number of industries.

I'll have to see it before I believe it, and then, if its true, someone's probably gonna make a good bit of money...:D

Blake

What is so horrible about caddies?

[amorsen (7485)]

"The consortium is pleased because no consumer optical disc that uses a caddy has ever been a commercial success."

I don't find the caddies around 3 1/2" floppies a significant hassle. Why can we deal with caddies on magnetic media, but not on optical media?

Re:What is so horrible about caddies?

[Dynedain (141758)]

That's because the caddie was a part of the media, just like Zip disks.

When the caddy sits on your desk, and you have to put the media in it in order to insert it into a drive (like early CD-ROMs and DVD-RAM) it becomes much less consumer-friendly.

Oh yeah?

[HarveyBirdman (627248)]

Can it stand up to the Samsonite gorilla???

Withstand that, and then you may color me impressed.

What about the other side?

[Sargondai (25502)]

I thought CDs these days tend to get scratched more on the 'label' side? And that's only since a price-saving move was made to remove an extra protective layer in modern CD manufacturing. Is this (or will it be) cost-efficient enough to add the protection back in?

Burning?

[Rew190 (138940)]

I RTFA, but a question popped in my head. Do any of you optical gurus have any idea if this can be used with writable media?

Re:Burning?

[Stripsurge (162174)]

Well since DVDs use visible light lasers (650nm) to both write and read, and you since you can see through the plastic to the recording surface, there's no reason it shouldn't work.

Scratch resistant is good...

[Thaelon (250687)]

But I'm wary of anything touted as -proof. -proof smacks of marketing getting their grubby paws on it.

Sure they gave you some steel wool to scratch the CD with, it's only a 3-4 on Moh's hardness scale, as in not very. I'll be impressed when it can withstand being tossed shiny side town on a little bit of sand on a hard surface and rubbed around vigrously. Quartz/glass/sand/silicon are a great deal more likely to encounter your CDs than steel wool is and they're a 7 or so on Moh's hardness scale.

I picked Moh's because to explain because: Mohs hardness is defined by how well a substance will resist scratching by another substance. from: http://www.calce.umd.edu/general/Facilities/Hardne ss_ad_.htm#3.6.1 [umd.edu].

Re:Scratch resistant is good...

[stonecypher (118140)]

Actually, steel and quartz are both Moh 7 [enchantedlearning.com]. Glass, on the other hand, is Moh 5. You should check your numbers before hitting submit. In fact, for the very reason that steel, quartz crystal and silica have the same Moh characteristics, the steel wool is a near-ideal example medium.

Maybe more importantly, you can't bring old CDs within three feet of steel wool, or they catch fire, immediately destroying all other music within 10 feet and causing a Save Versus Nerd Jokes at dc40 to 50 feet for all non-magical non-living items in range.

Mod parent down, metamoderate modders down.

I suspect this isnt a NEW development...

[riprjak (158717)]

As the opthalmic industry has applied scratch resistant coatings with matched refractive indices to polycarbonate lenses for many years now. Indeed, the "wire wool" test is a standard for scratch resistance.

It seems just a new application of old technology, long overdue IMHO. When I used to work in R&D for one of the major opthalmic lens manufacturers (when they still had R&D) I recall the licensing of our scratch proof coatings to the optical storage industry was mooted on several occasions.

As the cost of these coatings was prohibitive; often costing up to $12USD per application, I suspect they may have found ways to reduce the cost or they could afford to sacrafice matching of RI or some degrees of scratch resistance.

Furthermore, I recall an undergrad student doing work with Diamond Like Carbon coating of optical media at a local university several years back. Althought the differing refractive indices of media and coating led to problems.

Id love to see some REAL detail about this technique and hear if it is possible to apply to existing CDs/DVDs... although back at aforementioned opthalmic R&D lab I coated all of my own CDs/DVDs that I owned at the time... Since the coating was RI matched, it even repaired scratches :)

err!
jak.

degradability?

[billy reuben (667186)]

How degradable is this supertough coating? How hard will it be for you to get rid of it when you want it to go away? Remember that one of the main selling points of CFC's was that they were very unreactive. As we've all learned within the past couple decades, this was also a bad thing about them, since they were found to be associated with ozone layer depletion. I'm not saying unmarkable AOL CD's will destroy the ozone layer, but I'm thinking that disposal of items covered with this new coating might be a bit more complicated than it would be with conventional, noncoated objects. Thoughts?

Re:I guess the real question is

[NotQuiteReal (608241)]

Fun to watch, but the smell - yuck.

I don't know which is worse - AOL raw or cooked!

Re:I guess the real question is

[nomadic (141991)]

I don't know which is worse - AOL raw or cooked!

The worst is installed.

Re:*Yawn*...

[geordieboy (515166)]

You have very stringent anti-scratch requirements. I salute you.

Re:Finally...

[UWC (664779)]

I can take my CDs to the beach!

I can hear your CD player's various moving parts whimpering in fear.

Re:Pirates Beware?

[technopinion (469686)]

No, Disney DVDs need to be ripped and re-burned so that we're not forced to sit through 10 minutes of trailers and ads (for which they've so kindly disabled ff/next chapter) every time we want to watch the movie.

Re:For those who did not RTFA...

[mrchaotica (681592)]

A caddy is a protective cover for your disc that stays on the disc even when it's in the drive. A long time ago CDs used to come in caddys (or at least, I remember seeing a CD-ROM drive that used caddys when I was little). It's a stretch, but you could call the plastic parts of a floppy disc a caddy. The main reason you'd want to avoid them is that they add bulk to the disc.