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Rolling water drops takes off dust particles from lotus leaf showing self-cleaning performance. Self-cleaning effect has great importance in industry as well as in daily life. The present paper describes the preparation of self-cleaning superhydrophobic coating through simple and low cost dip coating technique. The prepared superhydrophobic surface enact as lotus leaf. Firstly TiO2 nanoparticles were dispersed in ethanol and different concentration of octadecyltrichlorosilane (ODS) was added in TiO2 dispersion. The effect of number of deposition layer on the wettability of the coating was studied. The coating prepared from five deposition layers showed contact angle higher than 150° and sliding angle less than 10°. The superhydrophobicity increases with increasing concentration of ODS. The hierarchical rough morphology which is preferable for superhydrophobicity was obtained. The prepared coatings were stable against water jet impact and showed repellent towards colored and muddy water. Such superhydrophobic coating can find enormous scope in self-cleaning application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First time, copper bismuth sulfide (Cu3BiS3) thin films were synthesized on the glass substrate using simple, low-cost chemical bath deposition (CBD) technique. The synthesized parameters such as temperature of bath, pH and concentration of precursors were optimized for the deposition of uniform, well adherent Cu3BiS3 thin films. The optical, surface morphology and structural properties of the Cu3BiS3 thin films were studied using UV-VIS-NIR spectra, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The as- synthesized Cu3BiS3 film exhibits a direct band gap 1.56 to 1.58 eV having absorption coefficient of the order of 105 cm-1. The XRD declares the amorphous nature of the films. SEM images shows films were composed of close-packed fine spherical nanoparticles of 70-80 nm in diameter. The chemical composition of the film was almost stoichiometric. The optical study indicates that the Cu3BiS3 films can be applied as an absorber layer for thin film solar cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]