Facile design and fabrication of highly transparent and hydrophobic coatings on glass with anti-scratch property via surface dewetting

摘要

Highly transparent hydrophobic coatings with scratch-resistant property attract tremendous interest from both scientific research and practical applications. The present study demonstrates that hydrophobic coatings with high transmittance and anti-scratch performance on glass substrates can be easily created by dewetted epoxy structures in large scale, followed by the attachment of a low surface energy material. The influence of epoxy solution concentrations on the surface dewetted structures, as well as the hydrophobicity and transmissivity of glass substrates were investigated. It was found that the epoxy solution concentration of 5% combined with a low surface energy material coating on glass exhibited the highest contact angle of similar to 113 degrees. UV-vis spectrum studies indicated that the coatings fabricated by our method had almost the same transmittance as that of the glass substrate. In addition, nano-scratch test illustrated that the prepared coating was capable of delaying crack generation, further strengthening the glass surfaces. Furthermore, our approach also facilitates the large-scale fabrication of hydrophobic anti-scratch coatings on glass as demonstrated by the preparation of mobile phone screen coatings. The detailed mechanism of large-scale hydrophobic coatings on glass with high transmission and anti-scratch performance was carefully elaborated.