Antifouling evaluation of superhydrophobic coatings synthesised from rice husk ash
Superhydrophobic coatings have been widely used due to its water repellent, antifouling, self-cleaning and weather protective properties. For better sustainability, rice husk ash was investigated to substitute the use of commercial nanoparticles.
The rice husk ash contains 97.5 wt.% of SiO2 and 2.0 wt.% of carbon after pre-treatment using citric acid and calcination at 800 °C for 0.5 h. The BET surface of irregular ash particles was measured to be 206.03 m2 g−1 and the average pore diameter is estimated at 5.7 nm. The near superhydrophobic coating could be formed easily by spraying the mixture of ash (6 wt.%) and a hydrophobic agent in ethanol solution on a thin layer of commercial adhesive. FTIR spectra could not confirm the existence of -CF2– group on coating when 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecyltriethoxysilane (HFDS) was added as the hydrophobic agent in the coating formulation.
Decrement in hydrophobicity was observed
The other hydrophobic groups on the coating could not be confirmed when stearic acid was added into the coating formulation due to the interference of adhesive layer. Still, the average water contact angle on the ash/HFDS coating (3M-HFDS) was improved to 144.2°. However, slight decrement in hydrophobicity was observed when stearic acid grafting groups were introduced. The near superhydrophobic coatings showed antifouling properties when they were immersed in the slurry solution containing kaolin.
The study is published in: Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 99, October 2016, Pages 140–146
