Reusing ground tire rubber powder as thermoplastic elastomers with excellent superhydrophobicity and self-cleaning performance

A simple, effective and inexpensive method was proposed to reuse ground tire rubber (GTR) powder by preparing a superhydrophobic surface via a molding process. The obtained superhydrophobic surface was based on low-density polyethylene (LDPE) / ground tire rubber (GTR) thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) where the styrene-butadiene-styrene block copolymer (SBS) was used as compatibilizer and series sandpapers were used as templates. The mechanical properties, hydrophobic properties, surface morphology and self-cleaning property were investigated systematically. The results showed that both of the mechanical properties and superhydrophobicity could be greatly improved with a certain amount of SBS. The superhydrophobic surface based on molded LDPE/SBS/GTR (weight ratio = 40/15/60) TPE exhibited excellent superhydrophobicity (with a contact angle of 164.6° ± 3.0° and a tilt angle of 4.4° ± 1.9°). Furthermore, abundant tearing microstructure could be found obviously by morphology observation. Optical images indicated the surface possessed of low adhesion force and self-cleaning property.