Review of Non-Fluorinated Durable Water Repellent and Stain-Resistant Materials and Their Future development

Abstract Materials with superhydrophobic surfaces have significant values in industrial applications for the reason that these materials usually has the abilities of self-cleaning and stain-resisting. Currently, most superhydrophobic materials are fluorinated ones because fluorinated groups contribute to decreasing the surface energy and surface tension of materials. Nevertheless, toxicity of fluorinated materials prevents them from being widely used in some industrial areas. Thus, this paper aims to have a review of methods used to fabricate non-fluorinated materials with superhydrophobic surfaces. This work introduces both the advantages and disadvantages of fluorinated materials and displays the reasons why materials can be superhydrophobic. In addition, hierarchical structures and re-entrant structures are shown in this passage and methods of making these structures are listed. Besides, this paper presents some methods to fabricate structures which contribute to superhydrophobization. Furthermore, some non-fluorinated materials are listed and their abilities of repelling water and stains are displayed, consisting of silanes, organic materials, and inorganic materials. At last, this paper illustrates current limitation of non-fluorinated materials and their future developments.