In 1950, Dr. Dong Qifang, a Chinese American scientist, developed Directional Glass Beads, and then developed the principle diagram of micro prism reflection
Reflective cloth and other reflective materials. In 1968, Rowland brothers of the United States invented and registered the micro prism retroreflection technology. The reflective film product was successfully developed by 3M company of the United States. So far, only a few countries such as the United States, Japan, China and South Korea can produce it. The reflective film has been used in developed countries for a long time. Its excellent optical properties and excellent socio-economic value have been widely recognized and accepted. Similarly, this has also attracted the full attention of many scientific and technological workers in the field of Optics and traffic safety in China. In the 1970s, Mr. Yang Yonggang of the optics Department of the Chinese Academy of Metrology introduced the structural principle, optical characteristics, performance test and other technical documents of the performance of directional reflective film to China. Subsequently, many scientific research institutes and colleges and universities successively invested in the research and development of reflective film series products. For example, the Highway Science Research Institute of the Ministry of communications, the optical Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other scientific research institutions have organized experts and special funds, established a research team and conducted project research. These early experts and researchers devoted a lot of efforts to reflective materials and achieved certain phased results. Basically, they found out the schematic diagram of micro bead transmission and reflection of reflective materials
The basic production process principle, but under the conditions at that time, due to the weakness of basic industries such as chemical industry, special raw materials such as coatings and glass beads could not be solved, and there was no finalized production equipment, which limited the industrialization process of reflective materials under certain conditions. In the 1980s, Zhejiang Taizhou reflective material company began to develop high refractive index glass beads, which gradually solved the problem of developing the most important raw material of reflective film, laying a foundation for the localization of reflective materials in China. Since then, great progress has been made in the domestic micro bead transparent reflective materials in the 1990s. The embedded micro bead reflective materials such as advertising grade reflective film, engineering grade reflective film and high-strength reflective film have been developed. At the same time, reflective cloth, reflective leather, reflective fuse and reflective thermal film have also been launched one after another. By the 1990s, non glass micro bead products were basically mature in China, In this industry, large-scale enterprises such as huarisheng, Daoming and Jingli have also been formed. However, another type of reflective material, the reflective material of micro prism, is still in its infancy in China. It was not until about 2002 at the beginning of the 21st century that several shoe material enterprises in Jinjiang, Fujian developed the reflective lattice sheet of civil products in micro prism. After several years of evolution, although the quality of products has been improved, However, it still stays in the most original production mode, intermittent production mode. Manufacturers producing such products in the world basically implement continuous production. Another is that the core technology is the research and development of the original mold, which is basically blank. Although little progress has been made in the development of core technology, several manufacturers such as xinliyuan have successively launched a new form of product - reflective spray-painted cloth. The introduction of reflective spray-painted cloth has developed a new market for reflective materials - advertising market.
