Bio-inspired route to prepare robust and repairable superhydrophobic coatings
Two Chinese researchers have fabricated a superhydrophobic coating with excellent mechanical stability and unique repairable ability.
Superhydrophobic coatings inspired by lotus have great application prospect for our daily life. Regrettably, three formidable challenges – namely complex fabrication, weak mechanical stability and large-scale fabrication – have already existed for a long time in this research field.
Easy to large-scale fabrication
In a study, a robust micro-nanoscale P25 (Nano TiO2)/MgO/epoxy resin superhydrophobic coating has been fabricated via facile one-pot route, which can be applied to arbitrary substrates through multiples methods. The coating not only displays excellent mechanical stability but also shows unique repairable ability to recover its superhydrophobicity under various damages by extreme environment such as low temperature, strong acid or alkali and this repairable process can be repeated for many times. The coating is also easy to large-scale fabrication with very low cost.
The study is published in: Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, Volume 498, 15 July 2017, Pages 182–193
