Mechanically robust and flexible antireflection coatings from UV-cured organic-inorganic composites

Abstract

It is a good choice to mix hollow SiO2 nanoparticles with organic resins to prepare mechanically robust and flexible anti-reflective coating. In this paper, hollow SiO2 nanoparticles with adjustable size, good dispersion and homogeneity were prepared by polyacrylic acid template, in which the size of the hollow silica nanoparticles can be adjusted between 60 and 370 nm. Hollow SiO2 nanoparticles were compounded with UV-cured silsesquioxanes sol to prepare four sets of composite coatings with refractive indices of 1.11, 1.20, 1.27 and 1.36. Each of these coatings can result in a significant reduction in the reflectance of the PET substrate and can result in the lowest reflectance of the PET substrate to 1.63 %, 1.26 %, 0.96 % and 1.45 %, respectively. Among them, the coating with the lowest reflectance result can reduce the average reflectivity of the PET substrate in the 400–1000 nm band from 5.92 % to 2.02 %. In addition, the organic resins can connect the hollow SiO2 nanoparticles together to improve the mechanically robust of the coating. The results of the pencil hardness tester showed that the mechanical properties of the composite coating were significantly improved. The composite anti-reflective coating with hollow SiO2 nanoparticles and organic resin not only has excellent anti-reflective performance in flexible substrate materials, but also has great application prospects in photovoltaic glass, architectural glass and other fields.