THE BEGINNING
The first patent for solar control film was registered by the 3M Corporation in 1966. It's original design objective was to control heating and cooling imbalances, which resulted from solar loading. The early films were found to reflect solar radiation back from a window surface, while still allowing vision through the glass.

Years of testing, refinement, and more testing have progressed and developed these products to include the vast range that is now available worldwide. Originally, all films were silver and reflective in appearance. Changes in manufacturing processes, and substrates used allowed the heat rejection properties to be enhanced, while eliminating the silver film appearance. Terms like 'metallised' and 'sputtered metal' are used regularly to describe films. This refers to the process used to manufacture the particular film.

DYED POLYESTER FILMS         (Ultra Tint does not recommend, nor stock this type of film.)
These film contain no metals and are considered to be non reflective. They provide some glare and fade control, along with some element of heat control by way of solar absorption.  Absorption of heat is far less effective than reflectance.

METALLISED FILMS
Metallising (also referred to as vacuum coating) allows a metal (usually aluminum) to be applied as a layer or coating to a clear polyester film, before being laminated with another polyester layer. Since this process can be accurately controlled, films can be made with varying levels of light transmittance.

SPUTTERED METAL FILMS
The sputtering process requires a large vacuum chamber to be filled with an inert gas as well as electrical energy. This energy creates a negative charge in the gas molecules which are allowed to move around freely within the low pressure vacuum of the chamber at high velocity. The metal that is to be applied to the polyester film, (or cathode) is struck by these particles releasing atoms of the metal also at high velocity. these eventually strike the film substrate creating a thin layer of metallic oxide. Sputtered films have excellent solar control properties.