UV Curable Stimuli-Responsive Coatings with Antifogging and Oil-Repellent Performances

Antifogging coatings prepared by highly hydrophilic/superhydrophilic strategies are susceptible to general oily contaminations, hence readily losing their activities. Herein, a stimuli-responsive antifogging/oil-repellent coating with the delicate balance between hydrophilic and oleophobic components was prepared via UV-assisted cross-linking method. Initially, different contents of acrylate monomers, including acrylic acid (AA), 1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-tridecafluoro-n-octyl acrylate (TFOA), and 4-benzoylphenyl acrylate (BPA) were thermally polymerized to get a series of terpolymers poly(AA-co-TFOA-co-BPA). Afterwards, the poly(AA-co-TFOA-co-BPA) was covalently tethered on varied substrate surfaces (i.e., glass slides, PC, PET, PVC) through a UV triggered anchoring of BPA. Benefiting from the delicate balance between the hydrophilic poly(AA) and oleophobic poly(TFOA), the resultant coating displays solvent sensitive stimuli-responsive wettability, driven by the encountered liquids with different surface tension. Therefore, those coatings show excellent anti-fogging ability with ~90% light transmission, in a wide temperature range from -20 ℃ to 85 ℃, meanwhile, the coatings also display remarkably high oil-repellent with extremely low sliding angle for low tension liquids. These findings support the development of functional coating that can highly maintain antifogging performances while effectively avoid oily contaminations, in various imaging, medical and analytical applications.