A Facile, Sustainable Strategy towards the Preparation of Silicone Nanofilaments and Their Use as Antiwetting Coatings

Synthesis of silicone nanofilaments (SNF) on substrates is a successful approach to fabricate superantiwetting surfaces. However, the yield of SNF is usually very low (<< 1 %). After coating reactions, excessive organosilane residues become wastes and are released to the environment. Here, we report a facile, sustainable, high yield strategy to prepare silicone nanofilament coatings by simply exposing trifunctional silane/toluene solution to air. When toluene is exposed to air with relative humidity between 30% and 45%, it can trap a suitable amount of water which enables fast and continuous growth of SNF on different substrates. This new finding not only simplifies the fabrication procedure but also enables the preparation of SNF coatings in a sustainable, high-yield manner. Such a novel technique allows the preparation of superhydrophobic samples on a large scale-hundreds of samples can be prepared in less than 1 day by simply using a mother solution containing a small amount of trifunctional silane.