Effective Harmful Organism Management I: Fabrication of Facile and Robust Superhydrophobic Coating on Fabric

Advances in harmful organism management are highly demanding due to the toxicity of conventional coating approaches. Exploiting biomimetic superhydrophobicity could be a promising alternative on account of its cost-effectiveness and eco-friendliness. Here, we introduce a facile method to fabricate a robust superhydrophobic coating on a fabric substrate. This is achieved by sequentially spraying TiO2-epoxy resin nanocomposite material and fluorocarbon-silane modified SiO2 nanoparticles (FC-silane SiO2 NPs). The superhydrophobicity is attributed to the nanoparticles constituting a micro/nano hierarchical structure and the fluorocarbon of the modified SiO2 NPs lowering the surface energy. The epoxy resin embedded in the coating layer plays an important role in improving the robustness. The robustness of the superhydrophobic surface is demonstrated by measuring the water slide angle of surfaces that are subject to salty water at 500 rpm stirring condition for up to 13 days. This study focuses on ensuring the superhydrophobicity and robustness of the coating surface, which is preliminary work for the practical management of macrofoulers. Based on this work, we will perform practical harmful organism management in seawater as a second research subject.