Towards superhydrophobic coatings via thiol-ene post-modification of polymeric submicron particles

Superhydrophobic coatings find important applications in consumer, commercial and advanced materials industries. Despite the existing approaches, the variety of substrates and different coating compositions necessitates the availability of several simple and versatile strategies for creating these functional coatings. This work demonstrates a facile and versatile strategy for achieving superhydrophobic coatings via deposition of modified polyvinylidene fluoride (m-PVDF) microparticles and subsequent thiol-ene surface functionalization of the microparticles with perfluorodecyl-1-thiol. The “ene” functionalities of the m-PVDF microparticles are achieved via dehydrofluorination of PVDF. The obtained coatings exhibit up to 160° static water contact angle. We show that the hydrophobic properties of the coatings are dependent upon the surface coverage of the substrate with the microparticles and the functionalization with the perfluorodecyl groups. Raman spectroscopy was used to provide insight into the thiol-ene functionalization of the superhydrophobic coatings.