In Situ Self‐Assembled Polyoxotitanate Cages on Flexible Cellulosic Substrates: Multifunctional Coating for Hydrophobic, Antibacterial, and UV‐Blocking Applications

Abstract

Surface coating is a powerful approach to fabricate multifunctional materials that are essential for numerous applications. However, to achieve such multifunctional coating with a facile single-step procedure, especially on flexible substrates, is still a big challenge, as current fabrication protocols usually require sophisticated equipment and complicated procedures. Here, a novel coating technology involving in situ self-assembly of the polyoxotitanate (POT) cage [Ti 18 Mn 4 O 30 (OEt) 20 Phen 3 ] is reported to fabricate multifunctional cotton fabrics in a single step. The in situ generated spherical microparticles of 0.8 µm average diameter are firmly mounted on the underlying cotton substrate, imparting the coated surface with robust hydrophobicity (water contact angle of 148.1 ± 5.4°), antibacterial activity (against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus epidermidis, and Staphylococcus aureus), and excellent UV-blocking performance (89% blocked at 350 nm). This coating technology is efficient, straightforward, requires no specialized equipment, and most importantly, is readily extendable to other flexible substrates. Combined with the rapidly developing area of POT cages and similar molecular materials, the reported technology based on in situ self-assembly holds great promise for further advancing the fabrication of multifunctional flexible devices via a single-step coating operation.

Fabrication of Hydrophobic Coatings Using Sugarcane Bagasse Waste Ash as Silica Source

“…The principle of water repellence of a superhydrophobic surface can be extended to practical applications, for example to develop coatings for car windows, buildings, tiles, and clothes [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. Today, superhydrophobic materials have found spectacular advantages such as water repellence [26,27], oil recovery [28][29][30], self-cleaning [31,32], anti-corrosive [33,34], anti-blocking [35][36][37], mechanical strength [38,39], anti-icing [40,41], and so on. Various techniques have been established to fabricate superhydrophobic surfaces, such as plasma or laser etching [42,43], photolithography [14,44], and electrochemical deposition [45].…”

Polyoxometalates: Tailoring metal oxides in molecular dimension toward energy applications

“…Polyoxometalates modified with titanium dopants form composites with TiO 2 , altering the grain boundary structures of TiO 2 and improving the photoconductivity properties . Polyoxotitanates with nitrogen doping exhibit effective dye degradation performance when they are functionalized with ligands …”

“…145 Polyoxotitanates with nitrogen doping exhibit effective dye degradation performance when they are functionalized with ligands. 146,147 Polyoxotitanates are found to be useful for lithiumion batteries and sodium-ion batteries. For instance, they Chen et al 134 Copyright RSC (2014).…”

Metal Nanoparticles for Improving Bactericide Functionality of Usual Fibers

“…The fibers currently used in protective outfits are much more common and produced on the basis of synthetic, semi-synthetic, natural polymers, and combinations thereof. Notably, the paradigm of multipurpose functionalization of textiles [7] could be applied for antimicrobial activity also [8].…”