Smooth Transparent Omniphobic Coatings with Remarkable Liquid Repellence

Liquid repellent surfaces are of high interest in various fields like protective coatings and droplet manipulation due to their outstanding properties from self-cleaning to anti-fouling. Most reported surfaces rely on the fabrication of micro/-nanostructured surfaces, the infusion of porous surfaces with immiscible lubricants, or the grafting of monolayers with low surface energy to achieve repellence of various liquids. However, these methods are limited in terms of their durability and long-term stability. Here, the fabrication of smooth, transparent fluorinated poly (perfluoroalkyl methacrylate) coatings via UV-initiated radical polymerization in a simple one-step procedure is reported. The resulting surfaces show very low surface energies of down to 7 mN m(-1), low contact angle hysteresis below 5 degrees, very good repellence towards various liquids with different polarities as well as self-cleaning and anti-graffiti ability. The fabricated coatings can be applied to various substrates from glass slides to microfiber cloths. This demonstrates that they outperform common commercially available fluorinated coatings, such as, for example, Hyflon AD 40L S, in terms of liquid repellence and their performance in real-world applications.

Automated summary

This article reports a simple method for the fabrication of smooth, transparent liquid repellent surfaces via UV-initiated radical polymerization in a one-step procedure. These surfaces exhibit very low surface energies, excellent repellence towards liquids with different polarities, as well as self-cleaning and anti-graffiti abilities.