Abstract
Upon contact with a dusty superhydrophobic surface, moving spherical water drops collect the dust particles and eventually flow off the surface. Herein, we report a very simple one-step approach to fabricate transparent and self-cleaning superhydrophobic coatings via the sol-gel processing of long-chain fluoroalkylsilane. The coating surface exhibited a rough, wrinkled, hill-like morphology similar to the microstructure of the lotus leaf (rough micro-scale papillae), which is promising for superhydrophobicity. The air bags trapped in the rough, hill-like structure allow the water drops to take a round shape with a contact angle of 169°. These round water drops abruptly roll off the coating surface at less than 5°of tilting. No major or minor water-drop pinning was observed during the roll off. The dust-repellent (self-cleaning) property, plastron stability, and durability against water-jet impact were examined on the superhydrophobic coatings.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 897-903 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Applied Surface Science |
| Volume | 351 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2015 Oct 1 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We greatly appreciate the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China ( 21101056 , 21105021 ). The research was also supported by KETEP 20124030200120 and 20133030010890 .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords
- Dip coating
- Lotus leaf
- Plastron layer
- Self-cleaning
- Sol-gel process
- Superhydrophobic
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Surfaces, Coatings and Films
- Surfaces and Interfaces