Respiratory mucosa-inspired “sticky-slippery coating” with transparency and structure adaptation based on comb-polymer nanogel

Abstract

Liquid-repellent coatings with a combined competence of strong interfacial adhesion, excellent structural stability, and environmental friendliness are substantially demanded in daily life and industry. However, it is still extremely challenging to create such materials. Here, we present a respiratory mucosa-inspired robust sticky-slippery liquid-like coating by the assembly of comb-polymer nanogel, in which hexafluorobutyl methacrylate (HF) served as a mediator to improve the compatibility between adhesive and lubricant monomers, generating homogenous nanogel with covalently attached comb-type lubricant brushes. By virtue of nanoscale size and viscous flow nature, our nanogel enables a universal tool to tightly wrap desirable coatings with a unique multilayer structure on various structured substrates (e.g., plane, curved surface, and porous net) while maintaining their pristine morphologies. The lubricant brushes enriched at the coating surface form a uniform liquid-like lubricant layer with ultralow liquids sliding angle (<5°), while adhesive segments adhere to the substrate with high adhesion strength (>9.0 MPa). Meanwhile, the resultant coating exhibited excellent flexibility, fascinating transparency, good antifouling performance, and long-term structure stability under harsh conditions. The synthesis of such fascinating sticky-slippery liquid-like coating may offer new insights into the design and development of environmentally friendly slippery coatings for numerous applications.