Digital printing to ecoactivate porcelain gres large slabs using micro-TiO2 as photocatalyst

In the present work, we show the preparation of porcelain grés large slabs and the transformation of the traditional ceramic into an ecoactive material: Active clean air & anti-bacterial ceramicTM has been tested and its antibacterial and self-cleaning properties has been confirmed. New industrially produced photocatalytic slabs provide very good photocatalytic performance, but also meet standard requirements with respect to hardness, lack of porosity, vitrified surface, durability: these are key features required of porcelain floor and wall tiles, which best representing innovation in today’s surfaces. A very interesting product of technological progress, which increasingly asks for sophisticated products with beautiful aesthetic effects, is a maxi floor and wall tile system, which combines the traditional qualities of porcelain with the new features of ultra-high performance. At the beginning of the industrial productions, porcelain grés tiles were considered as just a technical material. Today both properties and beauty of these materials completely fit the market requests. In particular, the possibility to prepare slabs of large sizes is the new frontier of building materials. The digital printing was exploited as a new tool to manufacture photocatalytic tiles even of very large size (150x300 cm).