Abstract
Considerable attention has been devoted to the in-situ deposition of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires (ZnO-NWs) on the surface of organic supports, due to their very wide applications in superhydrophobicity, UV shielding, and nanogenerators. However, the poor interfacial bond strength between ZnO-NWs and its support limits their applications. Herein, we developed a facile process to grow robust ZnO-NWs on a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fabric surface through simultaneous radiation-induced graft polymerization, hydrothermal processing, and in-situ nano-packaging; the obtained materials were denoted as PDMS@ZnO-NWs@PET. The introduction of an adhesion and stress relief layer greatly improved the attachment of the ZnO-NWs to the support, especially when the material was subjected to extreme environment conditions of external friction forces, strong acidic or alkaline solutions, UV-irradiation and even washing with detergent for a long time. The PDMS@ZnO-NWs@PET material exhibited excellent UV resistance, superhydrophobicity, and durability. The ZnO-NWs retained on the fabric surface even after 30 cycles of accelerated washing. Therefore, this process can be widely applied as a universal approach to overcome the challenges associated with growing inorganic nanowires on polymeric support surfaces.
Highlights
The wetting behavior of a surface, as a macroscopic representation of liquid–solid interface interactions, has attracted considerable interest in both theoretical research and practical applications [1,2,3]
For most hydrophobic materials composed of an organic matrix and inorganic components, the micro/nanostructures on the surface are susceptible to mechanical damage under abrasion forces, due to their brittle nature and the poor adhesion strength between the inorganic component and its support
The effectiveness of the hydroxyl-terminated PDMS is based on the following considerations: on the one hand, it endows the material with durable hydrophobicity, due to the low surface energy of PDMS and the reaction between the terminal silyl hydroxyl groups and zinc oxide (ZnO); on the other hand, PDMS will infiltrate into the graft layer, due to its similar chemical structure and polarity
Summary
The wetting behavior of a surface, as a macroscopic representation of liquid–solid interface interactions, has attracted considerable interest in both theoretical research and practical applications [1,2,3]. The surface wettability is governed by the combination of micro/nano-scale patterned structures and chemical compositions with low surface energy. Inspired by the lotus leaf, over the past few decades, superhydrophobic surfaces have usually been fabricated by first forming hierarchical micro/nanostructures and coating the rough surface with a low-surface energy chemical compound [8,9]. Among numerous approaches for constructing micro/nano-scale structures, ZnO nanowires (ZnO-NWs) grown directly on substrates to ensure vertical alignment have received a lot of attention, due to their well-organized structure, high aspect ratio, and close arrangement, which generate a minimum liquid–solid contact fraction [25,26]. ZnO-NWs with controlled morphology can be fabricated via a hydrothermal method and exhibit adjustable wettability after being modified with chemical compounds with different surface energies. The self-degradation of the organic substrate caused by the photo-generated electrons and holes of ZnO should be carefully considered
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