It’s well known that the paint protection industry has a lot of marketing buzz words to get you excited and make you believe that a certain product is the latest and greatest, the buzz word of 2020 – 2021 seems to be “Graphene Ceramic Coating”, or “Graphene Oxide Coating”.
So, what is graphene you ask? Well simply, it’s the strongest, and thinnest material in the world. It’s one-atom thick, two-dimensional sheet of carbon that’s packed into a microscopic honeycomb lattice. It’s derived from graphite but goes through a conversion process to create an amazing substance that has application in aerospace, automotive, industrial and many other industries. Sounds amazing right?
Well that’s the core substance – “Graphene”! The problem is, these graphene coatings are not formulated with pure graphene or have the same amazing benefits that pure graphene has, there are two ways to create graphene but only one is commercially viable. To grow it in a lab and create the true, clean monoatomic-layer of graphene which is highly expensive and only available to physicists. So graphene used in these coatings are derived from graphene oxide, also known as rGO (Reduced Graphene Oxide). So in other terms, graphene oxide does not maintain that perfect atom structure and super amazing characteristics that genuine graphene has.
While many of these “new kid on the block” paint protection brands that have been around for a very short period of time advertise microscopic or nano levels of graphene, its actually graphene oxide that is “infused” – or lets just say added into the ceramic coating, at very minor trace levels. The next problem is they dont maintain the same atom structure when applied to the surface in liquid form when its a graphene ceramic coating.
The base formula of these graphene ceramic coatings are exactly the same as ceramic coatings, there are very few base chemicals that can be used to create a ceramic coating such as Si02 and SiC, and be applied in this fashion on your cars paint work and form a bond. It makes you wonder how adding such a low percentage of a single oxide ingredient can have so many more benefits than a ceramic coating already does – such as better hydrophobicity, slickness, hardness etc. If it sounds too good to be true, then it often is.
But don’t just take our word for it, let a chemist explain scientifically why graphene in a ceramic coating makes no difference. > Click Here!
Not surprisingly though, the marketing for graphene products have incredible claims, and other verbiage to help drive sales. Graphene has often been depicted by many as the replacement for ceramic coatings, but with no proven performance or durability like ceramic coatings have for well over a decade.
And that’s the main issue with these products – the lack of understanding of the technology and marketing buzz words. Many companies make very big claims and promote the benefits without actual real world results over a long period of time to back it up and don’t offer a warranty or guarantee to back those claims. Makes you kind of wonder – huh?
As detailing professionals and enthusiasts, we’ve all seen this scenario play out time and time again. A new something or other gets introduced and quickly makes a buzz. So whilst we’re not saying graphene coatings dont work (after all they are based on a ceramic coating formula), there are no proven benefits as to why adding such a small amount of graphene oxide is more superior. A ceramic coating already forms a permanent adhesion to the surface with a covalent bond, are chemical resistant and have a water contact angle (hydrophobic effect) of over 125° depending on the type of coating used.
Ceramic Pro have been on the market for over a decade – over that time the range of ceramic coatings have been researched and redeveloped into many different formulas for testing (many of which didnt go to market, such as graphene), and there are many variations in the Ceramic Pro product line for different industries such as Marine, Aviation and Industrial Industries.
So when choosing a paint protection product to protect your new car, look past the glossy brochure, marketing buzz words and influencer YouTube clips, and look for a ceramic coating that has proven it self globally in over 70 Countries for over a decade, has their own research and development facility and are backed with lab tests to prove their performance!
