A Self-luminous Material Indication System from China

Light storage and self-luminous materials, which can be used as emergency evacuation indicator signs for buildings, have been popularized in many countries in the world. Surprisingly, China is now the main source of raw materials for hundreds of manufacturing plants of the light storage and self-luminous materials in the world.

 

The main components of light storage and self-luminous materials need to be refined from rare earths. China currently has more than 80% of the world's rare earth reserves, and 95% of the light storage and self-luminous materials produced are exported abroad.

 

The history of human studies of self-luminous materials dates back to the radium element originally discovered by Madame Curie. Radium is radioactive, will harm human health, so has not been able to enter the field of private use. The second generation of self-luminous materials are fluorescent self-luminous materials represented by zinc sulfide. However, fluorescent self-luminous materials have the disadvantages of short luminescence time, low luminescence brightness, poor light resistance and weak radioactivity. These disadvantages limit the wide use of this kind of material.

 

In 1992, a technology company in Dalian successfully developed light storage and self-luminous materials. The light storage and  self-luminous materials have many differences compared with the previous two generations of self-luminous materials. It has the characteristics of non-toxic, non-radioactive, high luminous brightness and good light resistance. The invention of light storage and self-luminous materials brought about the third revolution of self-luminous products.

 

The invention of the third generation of self-luminous materials changed the history that self-luminous materials not been used to produce civilian products. 

 

At the 1992 Beijing International Exhibition of Invention, the light storage and self-luminous materials attracted great interest from a German company. Since there are few manufacturers in the world that can produce this new self-luminous material, and the Chinese company's self-luminous material is technically in the leading position, the Chinese company soon established cooperative relations with more than 200 enterprises in the world after the self-luminous product came out.

 

In this way, China's light storage and self-luminous materials went abroad. More than 5,000 major passenger aircraft from major aircraft manufacturers such as Airbus and Boeing have been equipped with Chinese-made self-luminous emergency escape systems. Recently, China's standards for self-luminous materials have been used by many countries in Europe as national standards for such materials.

 

It is worth mentioning that after the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in the United States in 1993, the evacuation of people took six hours because of the inadequate emergency lighting evacuation system. As a result, the U.S. World Trade Center in New York, starting in 1994, formally introduced the self-luminous evacuation system produced from raw materials supplied by the Chinese company. During the September 11 Attacks of 2001, tens of thousands of people successfully escaped from the World Trade Center. The evacuation of people took several hours less than it did in 1993. Moreover, the number of deaths in the September 11 Attacks was significantly lower than estimated, with self-luminous materials playing a key role.