A multifunctional transparent superhydrophobic gel nanocoating with self-healing properties

Abstract

Inspired by mussels we designed a novel green superhydrophobic gel nanocoating with good transparency and stability through a facile copolymerization reaction at room temperature and a subsequent trimethyl silyl modified process, which is applicable to various substrates via a simple spray process without requiring toxic substances. Importantly, this well-designed nanocoating has rapid self-healing superhydrophobicity induced by usual organic solvents to face complicated work conditions, which satisfies the need of daily life and can be applied in industry as well.

Recent Advances in the Fabrication of Superhydrophobic Surfaces

“…16,25,6567 In the solution, the substrate can be coated. Or it may contain two main steps, namely preparing the corresponding coatings for the certain substrate and using relevant coating technologies to coat the substrate with proper roughness such as spraying (like supersonic kinetic spraying), 34,47,6870 brushing coating, 71 spin coating, 72 dip-coating, 51,72 solvent casting, 52,73 and so on. In addition to these two main steps, the method includes some simple extra complementary processing, such as atmospheric pressure plasma treatment, substrate surface etching, chemical deposition, etc.…”

“…In addition to (Figure 8). 47 The resulting gel coating not only possesses excellent transparency, stability, and rapid self-healing properties but also can be coated on various substrates. Cotton fabric, copper wire mesh, filter paper, foam, sponge, wood, Al foil, and PP (propene polymer) are all selected as substrates to achieve superhydrophobic surfaces successfully in the research.…”

“…4.1.3 Other As-prepared Materials for Direct Coating: Most of coating method to prepare superhydrophobic materials is direct coating methods such as modified particle homogeneous dispersions (such as powders and colloidal nanoparticles), 38,47,51,52,6870,88,9496 solution, 31,34 and so on using appropriate coating technologies including dip-coating, spraying, spin coating, etc. In this section, we introduce the coating fabrication according to the different types of superhydrophobic materials.…”

“…For example, nanoparticles dispersions are popular with scientific and industrial aspects nowadays. 38,47,51,52 However, there also exist some challenges to prepare excellent superhydrophobic materials, for instance, it is often difficult to coat as-prepared nanoparticles dispersions on a certain substrate strongly in order to achieve more durable production against wear and shear. 38,53 How to fabricate a biomimetic surface with large scale is still a challenge as well.…”

“…To achieve some practical applications, superhydrophobicity has been combined with other performance to achieve multifunctional materials such as responsive materials, 45 transparent superhydrophobic surfaces, 46 and selfhealing superhydrophobic surfaces. 47 With the development of fundamental research and basic principle, the fabrication methods have been optimized 48 continually. Environmentally safe fabrication process, 49 for example, has been achieved.…”