Toray has announced that it has developed an innovative technology to improve the durability of photocatalytic coating agents using fullerene, an allotrope of carbon, in collaboration with Riken.

Riken's Discovery Research Institute developed the derivatives of fullerene, and the two companies then developed a method to uniformly disperse and mix the derivatives with acrylic polymers of photocatalytic coating agents. They have now confirmed that the durability of photocatalytic coating agents has been doubled compared with the existing agents by adding the fullerene derivatives.

Toray has announced that the new method can also be used in conventional procedures for manufacturing textiles and expects that it will lead to a wide range of applications in textile products including clothes, curtains and carpets.

Further details of this will be presented at the 30th Fullerene Nanotubes General Symposium to be held in Nagoya from January 7-9, 2006.