The new product developed at the Bergamo-based laboratories ensures transparency through an innovative cement / admixtures mix design. The excellent flow properties of the mix allow bonding a plastic resin matrix into a final panel that combines the typical robustness of cementitious materials and the possibility of filtering light both inwards and outwards. This is the first solution for an industrial application of “transparent cement”.
Used for the first time in Shanghai, future applications of this material may encompass its use as an architectural component with diversified, integrable functions, such as, for example, internal lighting (shading/light diffusion techniques).
The challenge of transparency confirms the innovative and creative dimension of Made in Italy and allowed Italcementi Group to provide the Italian Pavilion with know-how and solid business experience, as had happened in the past with other important architectural projects.
At the heart of Italcementi Group’s innovation are the laboratories based in Bergamo and Paris where the daily work of about 170 researchers, including chemists, geologists and engineers, has made it possible to file over 60 patents in just more than a decade.
Italcementi Group’s new research centre, known as ITCLab – Innovation and Technology Central Laboratory, is rising on the Kilometro Rosso site in Bergamo. The new construction will boast a surface area of 11,000 m2, of which over 7,000 m2 totally devoted to research laboratories.
Italcementi Group has developed a network of International scientific cooperation consisting of research centres, universities and companies of the building and building material industry. The current network includes 10 external centres, 30 companies and 26 Italian, European and non-European universities.
The new i.light® transparent cement, by bonding special resins into a newly conceived mix, allows manufacturing solid and insulated yet light-transmitting construction panels. Italcementi Group researchers have identified the right formulation of a dry ready-mixed product that allows inserting these plastic resins in the cementitious material, which is naturally opaque, without creating cracks and jeopardizing the structure.
The company also makes a “thermal cement” designed to keep buildings cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and a “smog-eating cement” that abates air pollution.
The main advantage of this method of construction is that, we will be able to save a lot of energy which we use for lighting during daytime.
Further Information: http://www.italcementigroup.com