Recent Development in Durable Super‐Liquid‐Repellent Fabrics

Abstract

Super‐liquid‐repellent fabrics have attracted considerable interest owing to their fundamental importance and complexity and application potential in many fields. Despite the fact that a significant progress has been made to develop super‐liquid‐repellent fabrics, durability has been the main obstacle to their wide use in practice. In this progress report, the authors summarize the research progress in the developments of durable super‐liquid‐repellent fabrics, especially for the works published since 2006. The report focuses on fabrication strategies to improve the functional durability, evaluation approaches, and the quality level of the existing super‐liquid‐repellent fabrics. Challenges for further development of high quality, super‐liquid‐repellent fabrics in terms of practical application are highlighted.

Superhydrophobic Coatings with Periodic Ring Structured Patterns for Self‐Cleaning and Oil–Water Separation

“…Although many novel approaches have been introduced, unfortunately, fluoropolymer is usually involved in these methods . Even though some approaches do not include fluoropolymer, they still face the challenge for practical use due to their complex procedures of fabrications or their small‐scale fabrications .…”

Progress in Sol-Gel Technology for the Coatings of Fabrics

“…Some types of sol-gel systems also have bacteriostatic or antibacterial effects [16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. These systems are anatase-modified photoactive TiO2 coatings and sol-gel coatings with colloidal metals or metal compounds embedded in them, such as silver, silver salt, copper compound, zinc or quaternary ammonium salt [18], so sol-gel technology can be applied to textiles to develop various functional finishes with antibacterial [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32], water repellent [33][34][35][36][37][38], superhydrophobic [39][40][41][42][43][44], oil/water separations [45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53], flame-retardant [54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61]…”

Superhydrophobic Polypropylene Surfaces Prepared with TiO2 Nanoparticles Functionalized by Dendritic Polymers

“…One exciting achievement in materials and polymer chemistry in recent decades is the capability to create large synthetic nanostructures with well‐defined shapes and atomic structures in a rational and efficient manner . One example is the bio‐inspired non‐wettable surface which has many practical applications, including the separation of oil/water dispersions, self‐cleaning, drag reduction, anti‐fogging, anti‐bacteria, anti‐fouling, anti‐icing, and corrosion resistance, among others . Those achievements were inspired by the impressive wettability properties of natural surfaces, such as lotus leaves, rice leaves, red rose petals, the Chinese watermelon surface, butterfly wings, water striders' legs, and the skins of fish and shark, with many artificial surfaces with superhydrophobic properties having now been fabricated.…”

“…1,2 One example is the bio-inspired non-wettable surface which has many practical applications, including the separation of oil/ water dispersions, self-cleaning, drag reduction, anti-fogging, anti-bacteria, anti-fouling, anti-icing, and corrosion resistance, among others. [3][4][5][6][7] Those achievements were inspired by the impressive wettability properties of natural surfaces, such as lotus leaves, rice leaves, red rose petals, the Chinese watermelon surface, butterfly wings, water striders' legs, and the skins of fish and shark, with many artificial surfaces with superhydrophobic properties having now been fabricated. However, there have been very few reports about new combined synthetic methodologies for the fabrication of a specific nanostructuration.…”