Nanoengineered Coating; Lotus Effect, Morphology, Contact Angles and Wettability

The understanding of the surface behavior, interaction, wettability, and topographies of surfaces with fluids is very important to remove impurities from the devices and components and to develop washing fluids to clean large area surfaces. We synthesized nano particle filled composites by wet and semi-wet techniques to achieve hydrophobicity and hence the lotus effect. Nanocomposites with different composition of polymers doped with titania nanoparticles were studied to evaluate effects on wettability. Light scattering methods were used to study the absorptions and particle size. The contact angle and hydrophobic characteristics were very composition dependent in thin film composites. At certain compositions, we observed that material showed very high anisotropy in droplet shapes which diminished with loadings of nanoparticles. These composites did not show any change in hydrophobic characteristics when exposed with ultraviolet radiation.