Herein, we present a facile fabrication method to prepare the optically transparent, flexible and self-cleanable poly(urethane acrylate) (PUA) superhydrophobic film. The low surface energy siloxane functionalization on the thermally activated µ-patterned PUA/graphene oxide composite (S-PG) was found to be a successful strategy to modify the PUA intrinsic hydrophilicity into superhydrophobic nature. The S-PG film (with GO content of 0.1 wt%) repeatedly showed the water contact angle (WCA) of 149.82 ± 1° with excellent self-cleaning property. Further, the fabricated film exhibited high optical transparency (80%) in the 400-800 nm wavelength region. Finally, the practical applicability of the fabricated S-PG film was demonstrated by using the film as a protective layer for solar panel module. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the solar module with and without S-PG superhydrophobic film was found to be 5.98% and 5.82%, respectively. The enhancement in the PCE performance of the solar module is attributed to the excellent optical transparent and less light reflecting nature of the proposed film. which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
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