Substrate-heated electrospraying for simultaneously improving superhydrophobicity and durability of coatings

Abstract

Electrospraying is a facile approach to fabricate multifunctional superhydrophobic coatings, but poor durability of the coatings limits the applications. Here, a simple and universal strategy to simultaneously improve superhydrophobicity and durability of the electrosprayed coatings is reported. By comparatively studying “cold” substrate and “hot” substrate using different substrates and coating materials, etc., we demonstrate the ease and universality of substrate heating strategy for the simultaneous improvement of superhydrophobicity and durability. Substrate heating not only enhances the inter-particle cohesion within coatings and the adhesion between coatings and the substrate, but also can increase surface roughness. In particular, the coated stainless steel meshes from the “baseline” cocktail with a heating temperature of 100 °C (denoted as sample-100 °C) and without heating (denoted as sample-RT) are studied. Results show that sample-100 °C with simultaneous improvement of superhydrophobicity and durability presents much better performance in self-cleaning, anti-icing, and oil–water separation (as compared with sample-RT). This work not only provides a facile and effective strategy to simultaneously improve superhydrophobicity and durability of electrosprayed coatings, but also can be a good guideline for superhydrophobic coatings prepared by other spraying techniques.

Graphical abstract