NOSTRA™ is an ultraviolet (UV) curable coating material with a very high level of hydrophilicity and hard coating performance developed with Mitsui Chemicals’ original concept and molecule design technology.
NOSTRA™ Coating adds superior anti-fouling, anti-fog, abrasion-resistant, anti-static and quick-dry properties.
Some conventional hydrophilic coating materials, such as general anti-fog coating materials, make droplets into an even water film. A surface-active agent included in these materials, namely soap, dissolves in the water on the surface to reduce its hydrophilic. It is identical in terms of principle to the anti-fog effect of soap on the mirror in a bathroom. Some other conventional hydrophilic coating materials have their molecules incorporated with soft water-absorbing polymers that are intended to absorb droplets. However, both types of conventional coating materials have their own issues. With the first type, all the surfactant is dissolved and gone and the performance is lost after a certain amount of time, and with the second type, the wear resistance declines dramatically if more water-absorbing polymer is incorporated for a stronger anti-fog effect.
In response to these issues, the UV curable reactive hydrophilic ingredient of NOSTRA™ is accumulated on the surface to solidify with UV curable resins with enhanced intermolecular strength. This design provides NOSTRA™ with unprecedented characteristics, specifically water resistance and wear resistant properties as well as a high level of hydrophilicity that was unable to be reached with organic materials, for which it earns high marks from many different customers.
Another feature is that a highly hydrophilic film is generated merely by irradiating it with ultraviolet light for just a few seconds after coating and drying. This means that NOSTRA™ is so friendly to the environment that it reduces volatile substances in production worksites and helps achieve energy conservation and greater productivity.
NOSTRA™ has potential for use in a wide variety of applications, given that it can be used for coating many different materials.

You may have heard words such as water repellency and hydrophilicity in connection with coatings for automobiles.
Water repellency turns water into balls that roll. When water comes into contact with a hydrophobic surface, or a surface that is not compatible with water, water molecules gather to minimize the contact surface and eventually take a spherical form.
Hydrophilicity is the opposite of this. When water comes into contact with a hydrophilic surface that is compatible with water, water spreads over it to maximize the contact surface. As a result, a water film is formed. Fogging occurs when a surface has some parts onto which fine droplets are attached and other parts without droplets in the event of vapor condensation. On NOSTRA™, droplets immediately transform into a film on the whole surface, so fogging does not occur.
For this reason, NOSTRA™ was preconceived as having a function of spreading water and making it invisible. In this project, however, we+ inc. applied NOSTRA™ onto part of a water-repellent plate. The hydrophilic NOSTRA™ coating gathers water, combines with water and holds onto water instead of letting it fall off when in an inverted position.
A shift in thinking like this will broaden the range of applications of NOSTRA™ and other hydrophilic materials.