Eco-friendly self-cleaning coatings: fundamentals, fabrication, applications, and sustainability†

Abstract

Eco-friendly self-cleaning coatings have garnered significant attention due to their potential to address environmental concerns while offering remarkable properties. This review explores the dynamic field of such coatings, focusing on their fundamental principles, fabrication techniques, applications, and sustainability. The main findings of this review shed light on the fundamentals of a wetting phenomenon that underpins superhydrophobicity and self-cleaning, revealing how bio-inspired approaches and sustainable materials have enabled the development of sustainable coatings. This review is structured around the fundamental principles of superhydrophobicity, discussing the basic mechanisms and following different approaches to eco-friendly coatings, focusing on bio-inspired methods and sustainable materials. Next, detailed fabrication techniques are discussed to create such coatings followed by various applications across industries, emphasizing the real-world impact of eco-friendly coatings. The next section discusses the various advantages followed by investigating the environmental implications and discussing how these coatings contribute to sustainability. The review concludes with commercial superhydrophobic self-cleaning products, which reflect the current state of research, outlining the challenges, and providing insights into future directions and innovations in this field. By providing an in-depth analysis of their fabrication techniques, applications, and potential future directions, it serves as a valuable resource for researchers and engineers seeking to design eco-friendly superhydrophobic coatings.