Self-cleaning and self-sanitizing coatings on plastic fabrics: design, manufacture and performance

Innovative Self-Cleaning and Biocompatible Polyester Textiles Nano-Decorated with Fe-N-Doped Titanium Dioxide

The development of innovative technologies to modify natural textiles holds an important impact for medical applications, including the prevention of contamination with microorganisms, particularly in the hospital environment. In our study, Fe and N co-doped TiO₂ nanoparticles have been obtained via the hydrothermal route, at moderate temperature, followed by short thermal annealing at 400 °C. These particles were used to impregnate polyester (PES) materials which have been evaluated for their morphology, photocatalytic performance, antimicrobial activity against bacterial reference strains, and in vitro biocompatibility on human skin fibroblasts. Microscopic examination and quantitative assays have been used to evaluate the cellular morphology and viability, cell membrane integrity, and inflammatory response. All treated PES materials specifically inhibited the growth of Gram-negative bacilli strains after 15 min of contact, being particularly active against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. PES fabrics treated with photocatalysts did not affect cell membrane integrity nor induce inflammatory processes, proving good biocompatibility. These results demonstrate that the treatment of PES materials with TiO₂-1% Fe–N particles could provide novel biocompatible fabrics with short term protection against microbial colonization, demonstrating their potential for the development of innovative textiles that could be used in biomedical applications for preventing patients’ accidental contamination with microorganisms from the hospital environment.

Recent Progress in Fabrication and Applications of Superhydrophobic Coating on Cellulose-Based Substrates

Multifuntional fabrics with special wettability have attracted a lot of interest in both fundamental research and industry applications over the last two decades. In this review, recent progress of various kinds of approaches and strategies to construct super-antiwetting coating on cellulose-based substrates (fabrics and paper) has been discussed in detail. We focus on the significant applications related to artificial superhydrophobic fabrics with special wettability and controllable adhesion, e.g., oil-water separation, self-cleaning, asymmetric/anisotropic wetting for microfluidic manipulation, air/liquid directional gating, and micro-template for patterning. In addition to the anti-wetting properties and promising applications, particular attention is paid to coating durability and other incorporated functionalities, e.g., air permeability, UV-shielding, photocatalytic self-cleaning, self-healing and patterned antiwetting properties. Finally, the existing difficulties and future prospects of this traditional and developing field are briefly proposed and discussed.

Relationship between Wetting Hysteresis and Contact Time of a Bouncing Droplet on Hydrophobic Surfaces

The contact time of impacting water droplets on superhydrophobic surfaces directly reflects the extent of thermal and energy conversions between the water droplet and the surface, which is also considered to be crucial to the practical applications. The purpose of this study was to reveal the relationship between the contact time and the wetting hysteresis. We designed and fabricated six classes of surfaces with different extent of hydrophobicity through modifying the microscale/nanoscale hierarchical textured titanium surfaces with 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecyltrimethoxysilane, and we filmed the contact process of the water droplet impacting on these surfaces using a high-speed camera. It can be concluded that wetting hysteresis played a significant role in determining how long the impacting water droplet can bounce off the surface, based on the interfacial wetting mechanism and the work done against the resistance force generated by contact angle hysteresis during the dynamic process.

Bioinspired super-wettability from fundamental research to practical applications

Engineered wettability is a traditional, yet key issue in surface science and attracts tremendous interest in solving large-scale practical problems. Recently, different super-wettability systems have been discovered in both nature and experiments. In this Review we present three types of super-wettability, including the three-dimensional, two-dimensional, and one-dimensional material surfaces. By combining different super-wettabilities, novel interfacial functional systems could be generated and integrated into devices for use in tackling current and the future problems including resources, energy, environment, and health.