Bio-Inspired Skin-Like Transparent Antifogging Coatings with High Wear-Resistance and Effective Oil-Antifouling Ability

Abstract

From lenses for personal and sports eyeglasses to transparent displays and sensors, transparent substrates are frequently employed in optical applications. While these substrates should have superior optical qualities, they always confront a number of environmental problems including excessive fogging and surface contamination. Hydrogel is always a good anti-fogging coating. However, the poor bonding force between the hydrogel and substrates and easy water loss has hindered its development. In this work, we have developed a bio-inspired dual-layer anti-fogging AAm1+2@hydrogel coating on a variety of substrates by spin-coating technique via mimicking animal skin with corium layer and epidermal layer: the inner layer can be chemically bonded to the substrates and retain water for a long time; the outer layer can be wear-resistant to the external environment . This transparent hydrophilic hydrogel coating possessed CAs less than 90° and the light transmittance the same as that of bare glass of 90%. Besides flat substrates, such coating also successfully keep the fog from obscuring the view through cambered eyeglass lenses. Additionally, the bio-inspired AAm1+2@ anti-fogging coating has demonstrated prolonged anti-fogging duration over a wide temperature range for recycle uses. Under normal use circumstances, the outer AAm2 layer prevented it from being scratched or abraded and kept its transparency. The coating was also extremely effective in decreasing ice adhesion, and resisting fouling from oil contamination, which has offered lots of potential for use in numerous practical applications due to its variety of desired features that have been demonstrated and its straightforward production procedure.

Keywords: anti-fogging, bio-inspired, transparent, anti-freezing, anti-fouling