Authors
Jingcheng Ma, Laura Porath, Md Farhadul Haque, Soumyadip Sett, Kazi Fazle Rabbi, SungWoo Nam, Nenad Miljkovic, Christopher M. Evans
Publication date
2021/7
Journal
Nature Communications
Volume
12
Issue
1
Pages
1-10
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Description
Durable hydrophobic materials have attracted considerable interest in the last century. Currently, the most popular strategy to achieve hydrophobic coating durability is through the combination of a perfluoro-compound with a mechanically robust matrix to form a composite for coating protection. The matrix structure is typically large (thicker than 10 μm), difficult to scale to arbitrary materials, and incompatible with applications requiring nanoscale thickness such as heat transfer, water harvesting, and desalination. Here, we demonstrate durable hydrophobicity and superhydrophobicity with nanoscale-thick, perfluorinated compound-free polydimethylsiloxane vitrimers that are self-healing due to the exchange of network strands. The polydimethylsiloxane vitrimer thin film maintains excellent hydrophobicity and optical transparency after scratching, cutting, and indenting. We show that the polydimethylsiloxane vitrimer …
Total citations
20212022202320242424045
Scholar articles
J Ma, LE Porath, MF Haque, S Sett, KF Rabbi, SW Nam… - Nature communications, 2021