Superhydrophobic surface with enhanced weather resistance
Researchers have proposed a cerium oxide-based superhydrophobic surface with enhanced weather resistance and self-recovery.
For a superhydrophobic coating, its limited durability has been a persistent issue that often prevents its widespread usage in outdoor applications. Now scientists have proposed a scalable, self-recoverable CeO2/PDMS hybrid coating that harnesses synergetic benefits from hydrocarbon adsorption of rare earth oxides and hydrocarbon supply by a hydrocarbon-based polymer. It was demonstrated that this hybrid coating substantially outperforms other superhydrophobic surfaces in self-recovery of superhydrophobicity and weather resistance.
Wide range of energy and environmental applications
The synergetic effect expedites the recovery of superhydrophobicity via a facilitated hydrocarbon adsorption: e.g., the self-recovery time of the coating was over 30 times less than that with CeO2 nanoparticle-based coating after plasma treatment. Furthermore, the coating showed excellent weather resistance by (1) sustaining superhydrophobicity over 1 year without any deterioration in the outdoor environment and (2) surviving accelerated weathering tests.
Finally, the coating was successfully applied to outdoor electrical insulators, while exhibiting excellent self-recovery performance of superhydrophobicity even after exposure to 600 V of electrical stress in presence of conductive water droplets. The researchers believe that the coating provides robust superhydrophobicity via a rapid self-recovery performance and can be applied to any type of substrates with complex geometry by a one-step spraying process, both of which would be crucial to the application of the superhydrophobic coating in a wide range of energy and environmental applications.
The study has been published in Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 170, September 2022.
