Abstract
With the rapid development of spacecrafts in the low earth orbit (LEO), the protection requirements of polyimide (PI) surface against atomic oxygen (AO) erosion had been highlighted. Inorganic coatings trended to crack and peel off due to stress, which limited their application on flexible polymer surfaces. Different from the conventional idea of using dense inorganic coatings to develop AO resistance, in this work, APTES ((3-aminopropyl) triethoxysilane) -modified silica coatings with porous structure have successfully removed the influence of stress and increased the adsorption of AO and adhesion. As a result, the porous silica coating exhibited excellent AO protection performance (low erosion of 1.18 × 10−26 cm3 atom−1), good flexibility (no damage or crack on the surface after bending), and enhanced PI substrate-adhesion. The results of first-principles calculations and experiments indicate that the structure with large surface area and small pore volume is able to adsorb AO and reduce the erosion. This study proposed a new solution of adopting non-dense structure and a novel AO protection mechanism of porous coatings, which expands the application of inorganic coatings for AO protection.
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