Preparation And Study Of Superhydrophobic Nano-materials

Surfaces with very high water contact angles particularly larger than 150°are usually called superhydrophobic surfaces. These surfaces are of special interest due to their enormous potential applications in antibiofouling paints for boats, antisticking of snow for antennas, self-cleaning windshields for automobiles, stain resistant textiles, antisoiling architectural coatings, fluidic drag reduction. There are about two major methods to fabricate superhydrophobic surface:One is to modify rough surfaces with low surface energy materials; the other one is to produce mico and nano-structures on low energy surfaces. These methods mentioned above have some disadvantages,such as complicate processes, high-cost and difficulties in scale-up preparations.So it is important and meaningful to make the preparation of superhydrophobic materials simple,cost effective,applicable in large-scale.In the present study, silane polymer layer were generated on the surface of multiwall carbon nanotubes which is used for basis material by a simple vapor-liquid-solid method, and the surface of the generated silane polymer layer contain methyl group, ultimately we obtained proximal perfectly hydrophobic nano-materials. With further high temperature heat treatment,these materials were possessed of perfectly hydrophobicity. Using traditional contact angle probe method, no apparent contact angle could be obtained as the probing liquid droplet could not rest on their surfaces due to the extreme low affinity between them. A 180°contact angle was given using a recently developed technique contact/press/release method. Contact angle (CA),FE-SEM,TEM,FT-IR,TG-DSC were used for materials characterizations. In order to make this kind of completely hydrophobic materials being applied in future, its chemical stability toward acid and alkaline aqueous solution, thermal stability have been also investigated.