The Wear-Resistant Self-Cleaning Interface Prepared with Silica Sol Through Sol-Gel Method

Abstract

Self-cleaning materials played an important role in our daily life, but there remained some critical challenges such as complex fabrications, non-transparency, and poor long-term stability, which limited their applications. In this paper, acid-base silica sol and alkali-based silica sol were prepared by sol-gel method, with ethyl orthosilicate as the precursor. The two silica sols were mixed by different proportions. The mixed silica sol was evenly coated on the surface of the pretreated glass slide, and then modified by the low surface energy substance HDTMS and QX-18 fluorocarbon nanocoating, and finally prepared a hydrophobic and wear-resistant transparent coating. The surface topography of the coating was analyzed, and its acid and alkali resistance, wear resistance, self-cleaning performance and other properties were tested. The results showed that the optimal volume ratio of acid-base mixed sol was acid silica sol : alkaline silica sol = 3 : 7. The hydrophobic coating had good wear resistance, transparency, self-cleaning and acid resistance, but poor alkaline resistance.