Nanostructured superclear, superomniphobic glass fabricated by a statistical machine learning procedure.

Medical textiles have a need for repellency to body fluids such as blood, urine, or sweat that may contain infectious vectors that contaminate surfaces and spread to other individuals. Similarly, viral repellency has yet to be demonstrated and longterm mechanical durability is a major challenge. In this work, we demonstrate a simple, durable, and scalable coating on nonwoven polypropylene textile that is both superhemophobic and antivirofouling. The treatment consists of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) nanoparticles in a solvent thermally sintered to polypropylene (PP) microfibers, which creates a robust, lowsurface-energy, multilayer, and multilength scale rough surface. The treated textiles demonstrate a static contact angle of 158.3 ± 2.6°a nd hysteresis of 4.7 ± 1.7°for fetal bovine serum and reduce serum protein adhesion by 89.7 ± 7.3% (0.99 log). The coated textiles reduce the attachment of adenovirus type 4 and 7a virions by 99.2 ± 0.2% and 97.6 ± 0.1% (2.10 and 1.62 log), respectively, compared to noncoated controls. The treated textiles provide these repellencies by maintaining a Cassie−Baxter state of wetting where the surface area in contact with liquids is reduced by an estimated 350 times (2.54 log) compared to control textiles. Moreover, the treated textiles exhibit unprecedented mechanical durability, maintaining their liquid, protein, and viral repellency after extensive and harsh abrasion and washing. The multilayer, multilength scale roughness provides for mechanical durability through self-similarity, and the samples have high-pressure stability with a breakthrough pressure of about 255 kPa. These properties highlight the potential of durable, repellent coatings for medical gowning, scrubs, or other hygiene textile applications.

No abstract

Bio-inspiration and advances in micro/nanomanufacturing processes have enabled the design and fabrication of micro/nanostructures on optoelectronic substrates and barrier layers to create a variety of functionalities. In this review article, we summarize research progress in multifunctional transparent substrates and barrier layers while discussing future challenges and prospects. We discuss different optoelectronic device configurations, sources of bio-inspiration, photon management properties, wetting properties, multifunctionality, functionality durability, and device durability, as well as choice of materials for optoelectronic substrates and barrier layers. These engineered surfaces may be used for various optoelectronic devices such as touch panels, solar modules, displays, and mobile devices in traditional rigid forms as well as emerging flexible versions.

No abstract

High transparency, high haze substrates with self-cleaning functionality, can be used in advanced optoelectronic applications.

In this paper, we demonstrate the stain-resistance and high pressure stability of superomniphobic flexible optical plastics.

Transparent polymer substrates have recently received increased attention for various flexible optoelectronic devices. Optoelectronic applications such as solar cells and light emitting-diodes would benefit from substrates with both high transparency and high haze, which increase how much light scatters into or out of the underlying photoactive layers. In this letter, we demonstrate a new flexible nanograss plastic substrate that displays the highest combination of transparency and haze in the literature for polyethylene terephthalate (PET). As opposed to other nanostructures that increase haze at the expense of transparency, our nanograss demonstrates the potential to improve both haze and transparency. Furthermore, the monolithic nanograss may be fabricated in a facile scalable maskless reactive ion etching process without the need for additional lithography or synthesis of nanostructures. Our 9 μm height nanograss sample exhibits a transparency and haze of 92.4% and 89.4%, respectively, and our 34 μm height nanograss displays a transparency and haze of 91.0% and 97.1%, respectively. We also performed durability experiments that demonstrate these nanostructured PET substrates are robust from bending and show similar transmission and haze values after 5000 cycles of bending.