Surface morphological and topographical analysis of multifunctional superhydrophobic sol-gel coatings

An easy and low-cost new approach has been developed to create a multifunctional superhydrophobic sol-gel coating in which an organic modified silica layer is deposited on the glass substrate using a dip-coating method. In this study, the superhydrophobic coating was successfully designed on glass substrates with low free energy and hierarchical textures. The methylthrithoxycylene (MTES) based coating exhibits transparent superhydrophobicity with a static water contact angle (WCA = 153 +/- 3 degrees) and a sliding contact angle (WSA = 9 +/- 1 degrees) for the highest deposition temperature. The stability test shows that this superhydrophobic coating material has exhibited excellent thermal stability (weight loss = 0.429 wt %) in a nitrogen gas medium. Finally, fabricated superhydrophobicity is highly recommending for applications, where self-cleaning and transparency with excellent surface properties are highly demanding. We have successfully done a detailed analysis of the surface morphology and topography at different deposition temperatures.