Engineering the chemical and physical structure of surfaces to achieve tailored wettability has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years.  Surfaces with extreme wetting properties such as superhydrophobicity are of interest for self-cleaning, anti-fouling, and anti-fogging applications.  Development of simple fabrication methodologies that yield robust coatings is important for widespread implementation of such applications.  In this work, we present a simple technique for fabrication of superhydrophobic coatings based on photopolymerization of hybrid thiol-ene resins.  Thiol-ene resins containing hydrophobic silica nanoparticles were sprayed onto a variety of substrates (i.e. glass, aluminum, paper, cotton cloth) and cured under UV light.  Coatings exhibited water contact angles greater than 156� with low contact angle hysteresis and low sliding angles (< 5�). Scanning electron microscopy images show the typical nano- and micro-scale roughness required for superhydrophobicity.  Strategies toward achieving superhydrophobic/superoleophobic thiol-ene coatings will also be presented.

Spray-deposited superhydrophobic coatings via photopolymerization of hybrid thiol-ene polymer networks

245th National Meeting (2013)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.