Issue 47, 2018

Bio-inspired antifogging PDMS coupled micro-pillared superhydrophobic arrays and SiO2 coatings

Abstract

In this work, inspired by some typical creatures from nature with superhydrophobic surfaces, a bio-inspired antifogging PDMS is designed and fabricated successfully using UV lithography and a template method. First, we fabricated an SU-8 layer with a bio-inspired micro-pillared array (MPA) using traditional UV lithography. Then, it was used as a template to fabricate a PDMS film (PF). After that, it was chemically modified with SiO2 coatings. It was found that the PF coupled with sprayed SiO2 coatings and a MPA have a higher water contact angle (CA) of 158° and a lower contact angle hysteresis (CAH) of less than 2°. Water drops can be separated from this bio-inspired PDMS surface within 86.8 ms. More importantly, this film’s antifogging property is superior, with a recovery time of less than 13 s, which is significantly superior to that of the flat PF and the PF with the MPA. Afterwards, FTIR was applied to analyse the surface chemistry features and suggested that the bio-inspired PF has extremely low surface tension. So, it can be confirmed that an excellent superhydrophobic antifogging property has been achieved on the surface of the PF. Meanwhile, the microscopic and macroscopic dynamic movement behaviour of the fog drops was further observed. Then, the underlying antifogging mechanism was also revealed. These properties mainly benefit from the coupling effect of intermolecular attraction of droplets, chemical compositions (nanometre roughness SiO2) and the physical structures (MPA). The investigations offer a promising way to handily design and fabricate multiscale hierarchical structures on polymers and other materials. More importantly, these findings suggest great potential value for specific antifogging applications in display devices, transport, agricultural greenhouses, food packaging and solar products, especially in continuous harsh fogging conditions.

Graphical abstract: Bio-inspired antifogging PDMS coupled micro-pillared superhydrophobic arrays and SiO2 coatings

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
01 ဇွန် 2018
Accepted
05 ဇူ 2018
First published
25 ဇူ 2018
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

RSC Adv., 2018,8, 26497-26505

Bio-inspired antifogging PDMS coupled micro-pillared superhydrophobic arrays and SiO2 coatings

Z. Han, X. Feng, Z. Jiao, Z. Wang, J. Zhang, J. Zhao, S. Niu and L. Ren, RSC Adv., 2018, 8, 26497 DOI: 10.1039/C8RA04699A

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