A scalable, self-healing and hot liquid repelling superamphiphobic spray coating with remarkable mechanochemical robustness for real-life applications

Abstract

A simultaneous demonstration of scalability, mechanochemical robustness, self-healing and hot liquid repelling features is still a major challenge in fabricating superamphiphobic coatings. In this work, we developed a facile and effective silica-inorganic adhesive-based spray coating for the preparation of self-healing and hot liquid repelling superamphiphobic coatings that demonstrate good mechanical durability (under repeated adhesive tape-peeling tests, ultrasonic treatment, sandpaper abrasion and sand flow impact tests) and superstrong chemical robustness when exposed to highly corrosive media, such as 98% sulfuric acid and 5% chromic acid, for a long time. In addition, our superamphiphobic paints can be coated on large-sized substrates to create large robust coatings for real-world applications, which are still regarded as the tightest bottlenecks in the development of superamphiphobic materials. The large coatings also showed excellent liquid repellence when placed for a long time in the outdoor environment, and upon repeatable quartz sand abrasion and treading stepping test cycles. Moreover, the anti-smudge ability, semitransparency, repeated self-healing ability, self-cleaning behaviour both in air and oil, and hot liquid repelling behavior of the resultant coatings are also investigated. Taking multifaceted stability and scalability into consideration, our described coatings are promising for more vital applications such as windows, infrastructures, crude oil pipelines, in harsh chemical engineering, etc.