Dust mitigation from inclined hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces under electrostatic repulsion

Abstract

Dynamics of dust mitigation from inclined hydrophilic/hydrophobic glass surfaces are examined after introducing the electrostatic repulsion. Glass surfaces are hydrophobized via coating by functionalized nano-silica particles. An electronic circuit and electrostatic plate were constructed to create electrostatic force mitigating the dust particles from the surface. A high speed recording system is used to track and record the motion of the inflight particles repelled from the surfaces. Adhesion of dust on the hydrophilic/hydrophobic glasses is assessed using the atomic force microscopy technique. The surface of the samples is tilted to monitor the influence of surface tilting on: i) dynamics of the inflight particles, ii) dust mitigation rate, iii) and optical characteristics of surfaces prior and after particle repelling. The findings reveal that hydrophobizing the sample surfaces reduces the particle adhesion on the sample surfaces and the force of adhesion remains larger for small particle (0.8 μm) than that of the large size particle (10 μm), which is because of the large interfacial force created between the low dimensional particles and the sample surface. The dust particle displacement alongside x, y, and x-axes increases for the hydrophobic surface onset of electrostatic excitation, which becomes more apparent for the tilted sample surfaces. Optical transmittance improves for the particle repelled from hydrophobic surfaces and it further improves as the surface tilting angle increases to 50°.