Enhancing anti-reflective and hydrophobic properties of glass surfaces by nanostructuration and grafting of saturated carbon chains

Abstract

Herein we designed a simple method to fabricate an anti-reflective and hydrophobic glass surface, which used multistep strategy. Glass surface was nanotextured by etching process, using a facile hydrothermal processing, based on the interaction between ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH) and glass surface. Amine terminations were generated by silanization of the nanostructured glass surface using 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES). Octa-decanoic acid was anchored on the amine nanotextured glass surface by using N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) in the presence of the coupling agent N-ethyl-N-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDC) leading to saturated long carbon chains terminations on the glass surface.The surface characterizations of the glass samples and the effect of the molar concentration of the grafted acid were carried out, after each modification, by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy analyzes in ATR geometry (ATR-FTIR) and the transmittance of the glass was measured by UV–Visible spectroscopy. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) was used to perform the morphology observations of the samples after etching. Surface hydrophobicity was assessed by contact angle measurements.A decrease in the wettability accompanied with an increase in transmission of nanotextured glass surfaces was noticed after grafting of octadecanoic acid on the surface of the textured glass, which attest the success of the acid grafting process, established in this study, to elaborate hydrophobic and anti-reflective layers.