Low-temperature Preparation of Mechanically Robust and Contamination-resistant Antireflective Coatings for Flexible Polymeric Glasses via Embedding of Silica Nanoparticles and HMDS Modification

Mechanical and contamination-resistant properties are the most crucial and challenging issues that impede the practical applications of sol–gel antireflective (AR) coating. In this paper, we report a low-temperature vapor surface treatment strategy for the partial embedding and surface functionalization of silica nanoparticles (SNPs) on flexible polymeric glass substrates. SNPs, which were synthesized via the Stober method, were partially embedded into the polymeric glass substrates by vapor-phase surface treatment using volatile chloroform. Further vapor-phase surface treatments by water and hexamethyldisilazane (HMDS) were applied successively to achieve high trimethylsilyl coverage of the SNPs. The HMDS modification could convert the polar surface of SNPs to a nonpolar surface for contamination resistance, while ammonia, as a byproduct generated, could help to cross-link the SNPs via self-condensation of silanol groups, thus hardening the coating. The SNP-CWH coated polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) substr...