Fabrication of durable superhydrophobic coatings based on novel architecture obtained by Pickering emulsion templating

Despite the enormous research activity in the field of Pickering emulsions and the study of divers emulsion systems such as O/W, O/O, W/O1, O/W/O, W/O/W2. There are only very few studies which present the implementation of Pickering emulsions toward the development of superhydrophobic coatings and surfaces3. It is possible to obtain a hierarchical porous structure by application of Pickering emulsions on a given surface and evaporation of the solvents, this procedure is termed emulsion templating. Although an enormous amount of studies have previously reported the successful development of superhydrophobic coatings and surfaces, only very few of them exhibit significant durability and transparency that would be suitable for real-life applications. The current study presents the development of a highly durable superhydrophobic coating based on oil-in-oil-in-oil (O/O/O) Pickering emulsions. The combination of superhydrophobicity with significant abrasion resistance is obtained due to the formation of unique structures of shrunk colloidosomes on the surface of the coating. The coating is formed by emulsion templating of the O/O/O Pickering emulsion. The studied Pickering emulsions were applied on different types of polymeric substrates such as polypropylene and polycarbonate by using standard coating application methods including spin coating and roll coating.