Designing transparent superamphiphobic coatings directed by carbon nanotubes

• A transparent superamphiphobic coating was produced using CNTs as a template.
• The superamphiphobicity was retained after thermal treatment at 400 °C.
• Surface wettability can be controlled through varying the surface texture.

Creating surfaces with superamphiphobic property and optical transparency simultaneously would have fundamental and practical significance but has been proven extremely challenging. Herein, we develop a transparent superamphiphobic coating using carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as the template by a facile approach. CNTs enwrapped with SiO2 coating was produced by a sol–gel method and then sprayed onto the glass slides to form coatings. Subsequent thermal treatment and surface fluoration allowed the sprayed coating to exhibit enhanced transparency across a broad spectrum of ultraviolet and visible wavelengths and also display superrepellency toward water and a number of organic liquids, such as dodecane. The obtained transparent coating can sustain its superamphiphobicity even after thermal treatment at 400 °C. Separate experiment demonstrated that the CNTs-directed geometrical structure played a key role in establishing superamphiphobicity.

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