Simple Design for Durable and Clear Self-Cleaning Coatings

Despite immense potential applications envisioned for self-cleaning surfaces, the existing approaches used for fabricating these surfaces suffer limitations arising from their high cost and complicated fabrication procedures, as well as the lack of mechanical durability and poor optical clarity. Herein we report a simple fabrication design toward omniphobic surfaces involving the application of an epoxy thermoset onto a substrate and the subsequent addition of a self-cleaning component. This approach is environmentally benign, as it utilizes a nonfluorinated self-cleaning component, namely polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). This method is highly versatile, as was demonstrated by its successful use in an epoxy and its composites with a nanoclay, cellulose nanocrystal, and graphene oxide. The self-cleaning-, optical-, and mechanical properties of these coatings are systematically evaluated herein. In addition, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) characterization is performed to gain valuable insight regarding the morphology of PDMS in these epoxy coatings.