Preparation of photocatalytic thin films with composition dependent wetting properties and self-healing ability

Photoinduced processes of adsorbed and associated dye molecules in mesoporous titania coatings

“…Its applications include air and water purification, solar cells etc. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] In many studies dyes are used as model materials in photocatalytic measurements [8][9][10][11], as they are easily detected by optical spectroscopic methods; furthermore, dyesemiconductor systems have practical importance in the fields of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) [4,12], and waste water treatment in the textile industry where dyes are major pollutants [13][14][15]. Most studies measure the absorbance decrease of dye solutions containing photoactive materials under ultraviolet (UV) or visible light [9,[16][17][18][19][20][21], and only a fraction of the literature describes measurements on the air-solid interface, which can provide a simple model system and can be especially important for self-cleaning coatings [22][23][24][25][26][27].…”

Preparation of sulfur hydrophobized plasmonic photocatalyst towards durable superhydrophobic coating material

“…It was also presented earlier that the used blue LED light source with 405 nm emission maximum is sufficient for excitation of the Ag-TiO 2 catalyst [31,32]. In this work the photocatalytic efficiency of the sulfur hydrophobized composite photocatalyst layers were studied using the same blue LED lamp and ethanol as model volatile organic compound ( Fig.…”

“…This vulnerability of superhydrophobic surfaces is well known in the literature and it originated from the rough surface and porous structure of these lotus-like coatings [36,37]. However, in our previous paper we also presented that the nature inspired self-healing ability of the artificial coatings could solve this problem, if we can achieve that the damaged surface protrusions can regenerate itself [32]. In the future, we try to implement this self-assembled mechanism (air humidity catalysed syneresis of the hydrophobic dodecyltrichlorosilane molecules) into the sulfur containing superhydrophobic layer in order to get thin film with quick superhydrophobic recovery.…”

“…Two polymer based composites were chosen as reference: the Ag-TiO 2 / polyacrylate hybrid layer contains poly(ethylacrylate-co-methyl methacrylate) copolymer [4], while the polymer component of the Ag-TiO 2 /fluoropolymer composite was poly(perfluorodecyl acrylate) fluoropolymer [31,32,34]. As a results, the initial  of the Ag-TiO 2 / polyacrylate hybrid layer was 85.2 • ±1.75 • which was drastically changed to 0 • just after two days irradiation.…”

A Stimulus-Responsive Polymer Composite Surface with Magnetic Field-Governed Wetting and Photocatalytic Properties

“…To broaden the range of surface functionalities, hydrophobic polymer-based surfaces can also be enhanced with photocatalyst particles, resulting in photocatalytic and even antimicrobial properties; besides, they can also be utilized to induce changes in wetting properties through surface roughness modification [18]. In our previous works, spray-coated hydrophobic fluoropolymer-and PDMS-based layers were enhanced with visible light-active plasmonic Ag-TiO 2 photocatalyst nanoparticles to obtain bifunctional (superhydrophobic and visible light-active) [19,20] and trifunctional (with extra self-healing ability) coatings [21]. Despite there being no examples of combining the magnetic field dependent wetting and photocatalytic properties in the literature so far, these multifunctional surfaces may open new perspectives for sophisticated liquid manipulation techniques.…”