All-Nanoparticle Monolayer Broadband Antireflective and Self-Cleaning Transparent Glass Coatings

Abstract

The vast majority of light-emitting diode and liquid-crystal displays, solar panels, and windows in residential and industrial buildings use glass panels owing to their high mechanical stability, chemical resistance, and optical properties. Glass surfaces reflect about 4–5% of incident light if no antireflective coating is applied. In addition to energy losses in displays, surface reflections diminish picture quality. Engineering of antireflective coatings can be beneficial for all types of glass screens, specifically for large screens and touch-screen devices when scratch-resistance and self-cleaning properties of the glass surface are also desired. A scalable and robust approach to produce antireflective coatings for glass surfaces with desired optical and mechanical properties is introduced in this work. The developed coating mimics the structure of a moth-eye cornea. The coating is a subwavelength-microstructured thin layer on the glass surface made of a monolayer of hemispherical silica nanoparticles obtained by hydrothermal fusion of spherical particles to the glass substrate. The sequence of the particle deposition in the layer-by-layer process is adjusted to balance attractive–repulsive interactions among nanoparticles and between the nanoparticles and the glass surface to generate coatings with a high surface coverage of up to 70%, which exceeds the 54.7% limit of the random sequential addition model. This level of surface coverage allows for a combination of properties beneficial for the described applications: (i) an average reflectance of 0.5 ± 0.2% for a visible and near-infrared optical spectrum, (ii) an improved mechanical stability and scratch resistance, and (iii) non-wetting behavior.

Ultrastable Waterborne Nanocomposite Coating of Polyurethane and Zirconia Nanoparticles To Avoid Rainbow Effect on Polyester-Based Superficial Hardening Films

“…7,8 The presence of rainbow patterns will affect the light transmittance and visual performance of the display products. 9 To reduce the number of existing polyester rainbow patterns, several technologies have been developed. One method is to adjust the crystallinity and mechanical properties of polyester substrate through the biaxially stretching process which has problems such as poor process controllability, uneven particle dispersion, and poor batch stability.…”

Scalable Nanofabrication of T-Shape Nanopillars Based on Polystyrene/Polyphenylsilsequioxane Films Showing Broadband Antireflection and Super-omniphobicity

“…As we know, subwavelength nanostructures have been reported as a key factor for antireflective surfaces in visible spectrum. − Hence, it is of obvious significance to achieve nanoscale re-entrant super-omniphobic surfaces, which can provide potential antireflective performance with wide potential applications in the self-cleaning surface of optoelectronics, such as displays, , wearables, − and solar cells …”

Single-Step Fabrication of Longtail Glasswing Butterfly-Inspired Omnidirectional Antireflective Structures

“…By contrast, spontaneous crystallization of colloids renders an inexpensive and simple alternative for creating high-resolution antireflective structures. The self-assembled colloidal monolayers can serve as templates to pattern demanded architectures [ 18 , 19 ]. However, most of existing bottom-up fabrication approaches, including breath figure-based assemblies, magnetic-/electro-filed-assisted assemblies, capillary-force-induced assemblies, and Langmuir-Blodgett technology inevitably suffer from low-throughput production and technical incompatibility with standard industrial microfabrication [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ].…”