A fluorine-free superhydrophobic silicone rubber surface has excellent self-cleaning and bouncing properties

Abstract Superhydrophobic materials have been widely applied in self-cleaning, anti-fouling, anti-corrosion, anti-freezing. However, simple, efficient, environmentally friendly and large-area preparation is still a great challenge in the field of fabrication of superhydrophobic surfaces. In this paper, a simple physical deposition method is adopted to deposit a layer of alumina oxide (Al2O3) particles on the surface of the room temperature vulcanized (RTV) silicone rubber, and remove the excess Al2O3 particles on the surface to obtain the superhydrophobic surface of Al2O3/RTV silicone rubber. The contact angle and rolling angle of the superhydrophobic surface are 156.6° ± 1.1° and 5.1° ± 0.7°, respectively. It is found that the surface roughness of RTV silicone rubber is significantly increased via Al2O3 particles. The analysis of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) demonstrate that the superhydrophobic surface is obtained via constructing rough structure of Al2O3 particles on the RTV silicone rubber surface. In addition, the self-cleaning and droplet bounce tests under different conditions show that the as-prepared superhydrophobic surface has remarkable self-cleaning and droplet bounce properties. Therefore, this method can be employed to simply and effectively fabricate superhydrophobic surfaces in large scale.