Fabrication of Nanostructured Superhydrophobic Coating for Smart Coating Applications

Abstract

Superhydrophobic coatings are a new class of smart coatings developed by nano-materials. Nano-structured materials are placed over the surface to prepare the coatings. These kinds of coatings took attention from natural hydrophobic plants and species surfaces like a lotus leaf, nasturtium leaf, water strider and many more. These surfaces took human attention to prepare such kind of artificial surfaces. These coatings are not only superhydrophobic, but these coatings also possess other specific properties with hydrophobicity like self-cleaning, dust repelling, antimicrobial etc. because of smart properties, these coatings are termed smart coatings. newlineThese coatings are nowadays widely used in many applications such as anti-reflective coating for optical instruments, windows, and buildings, antimicrobial coatings for medical instruments and medical-related materials, electronics, oil-water separation, anti-icing coatings, hydrophobic coating for cosmetics and food grade materials and the range is very vast. newlineSol solution is a solution containing nanoparticles, which have to be coated on the surface. Various metal oxide sol solutions were prepared by metal alkoxides. Metal alkoxides were converted to metal oxides of nano dimensional range of particles by sol-gel methodology. The prepared sol solutions were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and particle size analysis (PSA) and zeta potential. The prepared sol solutions were modified by some modifiers, generally, silanes, which tend to decrease the surface free energy of the surface. Reduction in surface free energy helps to increase the hydrophobicity of the surface. Prepared sol solutions, with a specific amount of modifiers coated on various surfaces like glass, cotton fabric and Iron metal, and the results were compared. newlineThe hydrophobic surface is the result of a nanostructured surface and low surface free energy. The prepared surface is characterized by water contact angle (WCA), contact angle hysteresis (CAH), and surface free energy (