Study of self-cleaning superhydrophobic surface based on titanium dioxide nanomaterial

Abstract

Biological and chemical pollutants produced by man-made activities has been a serious worldwide concern. These pollutants will be embedded onto the exterior of a building where it will affect the appearance of the glass as façade of the building. The pollutants pose not only environmental issue but also significant health problems upon frequent exposure. Therefore, the research and development of an effective solution is essential to reduce the impact of these pollutants. Since nanotechnology has become one of the most significant discussion among researchers, self-cleaning based on nanomaterial could be the possible solution to these problems. Generally, self-cleaning properties refers to a surface that possess the ability to repel contaminants and can be divided into two types which are superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic. This study was focused to the development of superhydrophobic self-cleaning coating surface which offers more effective way of cleaning method at minimal consumption of energy and cost. In this study, a simple dip coating method for the fabrication of superhydrophobic surface onto glass substrate has been developed by using titanium dioxide nanomaterial. This research work was divided into three phases: synthesis, characterization and testing. In the first phase, synthesis of titanium dioxide coating solution was done by mixing methanol with water at the ratio of 0.3:0.7 before the addition of titanium dioxide nanoparticles into the mixture. The coating film was characterized by its physical appearance, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). Lastly the testing of the prepared coating surface was performed to investigate its self-cleaning ability against contaminants. It was concluded that the prepared coated glass substrate showed superhydrophobic properties which has great potential in executing self-cleaning action against pollutants. The developed dip coating method was simple, fast, able to control coating thickness and reproducible.