Excellent mechanical durability of superhydrophobic coating by electrostatic spraying

In a long-term working environment, the mechanical durability is still the highest challenge for their practical applications of superhydrophobic coatings. Here, a novel superhydrophobic coating is prepared and developed by the electrostatic spraying to improve mechanical durability. The superhydrophobic coating is composed of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and SiO2 nanoparticles modified with n-octyltriethoxysilane (OTS) and γ-methacryloxypropyltrimethoxysilane (KH570). Interestingly, the water contact angle of the superhydrophobic coating increases from 155° to 161.7o after 600 abrasion cycles, which is rarely reported in previous works. In addition, the superhydrophobic coating exhibits excellent adhesion strength (ca.6.0 MPa) and good anti-icing performance in extremely low temperature environments. The mechanism of above excellent performance is also investigated and proposed by molecular dynamics simulation. This work thus reports a new approach to design and fabricate high-performance superhydrophobic coating for various practical applications.