Molecular Architectonics Guide to the Fabrication of Self-Cleaning Materials

Abstract

AbstractSelf-cleaning surfaces are ubiquitously found in nature. Development of materials and products with self-cleaning property is highly desirable in order to avoid the regular hassle of cleaning employing hazardous and costly chemicals. The self-cleaning technologies are primarily developed based on the mechanism of non-wettable (superhydrophobic) or extremely wettable (superhydrophilic) surfaces found in the nature creating self-cleaning phenomena as observed by lotus leaf, rose petal, pitcher plant, lizard skin, and fish scale among others. Superhydrophobic surfaces are generally rough surfaces with low surface energy and hierarchical nano-/micro-structured morphology. The rising demand for the self-cleaning products encouraged researchers to adopt simple, cost-effective, and robust techniques to generate superhydrophobic surfaces. To date, polymeric substrates are considered as the essential raw material to fabricate surface roughness, while their costly fabrication procedures advocate the search for alternative technologies. Fabrication of hierarchical surfaces through controlled assembly of designer small functional building blocks by employing the principles of molecular architectonics offers several advantages including low cost and high surface area coatings through solution processable technique. Herein, we summarize the strategies reported to fabricate superhydrophobic and self-cleaning surfaces through the scheme of molecular architectonics and provide future prospective toward the development of highly sophisticated and multipurpose self-cleaning materials.KeywordsMolecular architectonicsSuperhydrophobicitySelf-cleaningLotus effectBreath figure technique