Optically transparent, superhydrophobic methyltrimethoxysilane based silica coatings without silylating reagent

The superhydrophobic surfaces have drawn lot of interest, in both academic and industries because of optically transparent, adherent and self-cleaning behavior. Surface chemical composition and morphology plays an important role in determining the superhydrophobic nature of coating surface. Such concert of non-wettability can be achieved, using surface modifying reagents or co-precursor method in sol–gel process. Attempts have been made to increase the hydrophobicity and optical transparency of methyltrimethoxysilane (MTMS) based silica coatings using polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) instead of formal routes like surface modification using silylating reagents. The optically transparent, superhydrophobic uniform coatings were obtained by simple dip coating method. The molar ratio of MTMS:MeOH:H2O was kept constant at 1:5.63:1.58, respectively with 0.5 M NH4F as a catalyst and the weight percent of PMMA varied from 1 to 8. The hydrophobicity of silica coatings was analyzed by FTIR and contact angle measurements. These substrates exhibited 91% optical transmittance as compared to glass and water drop contact angle as high as 171 ± 1◦. The effect of humidity on hydrophobic nature of coating has been studied by exposing these films at relative humidity of 90% at constant temperature of 30 ◦C for a period of 45 days. The micro-structural studies carried out by transmission electron microscopy (TEM)