Issue 2, 2018

Super-durable, non-fluorinated superhydrophobic free-standing items

Abstract

Although superhydrophobic coatings are commercially available, their weak mechanical durability hinders their large-scale applications such as for structural materials. Here a general press-in-mold method is reported to rapidly fabricate super-robust and non-fluorinated superhydrophobic free-standing items, through dispersing hydrophobic SiO2 nanoparticles in a series of polymers. The mechanical and chemical strength can be greatly improved by increasing the fabrication pressure, and the materials are found to retain superhydrophobicity after a knife/file scratch test, a liquid nitrogen test, severe sand/water impacts, acidic/alkali corrosion and 2000 cm sandpaper abrasion. These materials achieved better abrasion resistance than commercial superhydrophobic coatings and a higher retention ratio after abrasion tests and hardness than those of bricks. Radar diagrams were used to generalize the results of the mechanical and chemical tests to compare the material performances of SiO2/polymer blocks with those of bricks and commercial superhydrophobic coatings. The SiO2/polymer blocks achieved much better overall performance. This simple method has great potential for making either small domestic items or structural materials with robust superhydrophobicity.

Graphical abstract: Super-durable, non-fluorinated superhydrophobic free-standing items

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
09 Oct 2017
Accepted
09 Nov 2017
First published
09 Nov 2017
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2018,6, 357-362

Super-durable, non-fluorinated superhydrophobic free-standing items

X. Zhang, D. Zhi, L. Sun, Y. Zhao, M. K. Tiwari, C. J. Carmalt, I. P. Parkin and Y. Lu, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2018, 6, 357 DOI: 10.1039/C7TA08895G

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements