Untreated light sources often suffer from three major pain points: light concentration, severe glare, and uneven brightness. For instance, exposed LED chips emit harsh point-like light, which can cause visual fatigue when used directly for lighting; without diffusion treatment, the backlight of LCD screens will show obvious light spots and dark areas. Therefore, it is necessary to use light diffusion materials to convert point light sources into linear or surface light sources, and achieve uniform light intensity distribution through beam shaping, so as to soften the light source and eliminate glare.
The key characteristic of light diffusion materials lies in balancing the dual properties of "light transmittance" and "haze". The main way to achieve this performance is to add Light Diffusing Agent to transparent polymer matrices such as PS, PC, and PMMA. The core of its working principle is "the deflection of light propagation direction caused by the difference in refractive index".
Light diffusing agents are mainly divided into inorganic and organic categories. Inorganic light diffusers are represented by silica and titanium dioxide; they achieve light scattering by virtue of their high refractive index, but have shortcomings such as irregular particle shapes, large particle size deviations, and low light transmittance. Organic light diffusers include acrylic resin microspheres and polystyrene microspheres, which have good dispersibility and low light transmittance loss but suffer from insufficient heat resistance.
The Cheerspearl series High Quality Spherical Silicone Resin developed by Cheerchem combines the advantages and makes up for the shortcomings of both categories, boasting excellent light diffusion performance and stability.
● Excellent light diffusion performance
With high sphericity and excellent surface regularity, it not only reduces the disordered loss of light caused by irregular particle morphology but also enables more uniform light scattering to improve diffusion efficiency, thereby achieving better light diffusion effects.
A moderate refractive index difference must be maintained between the Light Diffuser and the matrix resin: a sufficient difference is required to generate effective light refraction, while an excessively large difference must be avoided to prevent total reflection (which would significantly reduce transparency). The refractive index of spherical silicone resin is 1.43; compared with PMMA-based light diffusers, when achieving the same haze in PS diffuser panels, the addition amount of Spherical Silicone Resin can be significantly reduced.
In addition, it has a narrow particle size distribution and uniform particle size, which further ensures uniform light scattering and optimizes the light diffusion effect.
● Stability
Spherical Silicone Resin can withstand high temperatures above 400℃. During the processing process, it will not deform due to excessively high processing temperatures (which would otherwise affect the light diffusion effect); when used in high-temperature environments, it still maintains stable light diffusion performance. This ensures that products such as lamps will not experience issues like yellowing or black spots (which damage lighting effects) due to temperature, thereby extending the service life of products and reducing maintenance costs.
Currently, the Cheerspearl series Silicone Powder from Cheerchem has been widely used in scenarios such as LED lighting covers, LCD light diffuser panels, and automotive lighting fixtures. It provides dual guarantees of "high-efficiency diffusion + stable durability" for various optical products.