Highly transparent and thermally stable superhydrophobic coatings from the deposition of silica aerogels

Transparent superhydrophobic coatings, having high water contact angle (>160°) and low sliding angle (<5°), were prepared by using poly(methylhydrosiloxane) (PMHS) and tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) as precursors based on a simple sol–gel process. The influence of different mass ratios of PMHS to TEOS on the transparency and superhydrophobicity of resulting coatings was investigated herein to get the optimum performance coating. The structure, composition and morphology of optimum performance coating were characterized by various technologies including Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, thermal analysis, BET, 29Si CP MAS NMR, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The optimum performance coating exhibits superhydrophobicity (CA, 164.7° and SA, 2.7°), a high transparency (transmittance closes to 90%) and a good thermal stability (up to 400 °C). Note that the optimum coating directly from sol–gel process exhibits poor moisture resistance. The low surface energy and high volume-fraction porosity structure are responsible for the superhydrophobicity, transparency and thermal stability of the as-prepared coating, while the poor moisture is attributed to the untreated hydroxyl groups on the surface of coating. The moisture resistance of coating can be improved by further treated by cetyltrimethoxylsilane (CTMS), and the coating could switch from superhydrophobic (164.7°) to superhydrophilic (0°) after heat-treating at 600 °C.