Experimental investigation of the anti-dust effect of transparent hydrophobic coatings applied for solar cell covering glass

- The prepared coatings possess high transmittance and anti-soiling effect.
- Low surface energy and rough structures of coatings result in anti-soiling effect.
- Duct-surface coating interactions are studied.
- Dust adhered on coated surfaces can be easily removed by external forces.
- The reductions in transmittance are less than 0.6% for the coated glass surfaces and more than 1.5% for bare glass surfaces.

Transparent coatings with different hydrophobicity have been prepared by a cost-efficient and simple approach. These coatings possess two main properties: high transmittance and anti-soiling effect. Four experiments are designed to simulate the surface-dust interactions, one of which is a dust impinging experiment and the other three are dust removal experiments. A high-speed camera is used to capture the impinging and depositing process of dust driven by air stream. Different moving behaviors of dust particles can be observed on the bare and coated glass surfaces, which can be used to illustrate the different soiling phenomena. The anti-soiling effects of coated surfaces are reflected in two kinds of experiments. The first is the dust impinging experiments and the second is the dust removal experiments. It is found that the low surface energy and rough structures of coatings work together to lower the adhesion forces between the particles and surfaces. This anti-dust effect almost has no relations with the strength of hydrophobicity: both superhydrophobic surface and ordinary hydrophobic surface have anti-dust effect.

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