Facile fabrication of fluoro-polymer self-assembled ZnO nanoparticles mediated, durable and robust omniphobic surfaces on polyester fabrics

[Display omitted] •Fluoro-monomer was polymerized on ZnO seed layer grown polyester fabric.•Omniphobic polyester was fabricated.•ZnO nanoparticles seed layer acts as intermediate to combine both polymers.•Final omniphobic product is mechanically robust and withstanding washing cycles. Omniphobic surfaces have been widely used in many applications, especially owing to their self-cleaning property. In this work, polyester fabric was modified to be super-omniphobic with a water contact angle (WCA) of 152° by reducing the surface free energy of the fabric surface via the polymerization of 3,3,4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7,8,8,8-tridecafluorooctyl methacrylate (TDM) on a ZnO seed layer grown on polyester which acts as intermediate in combining polymerized TDM into polyester. Two types of fabrics, one with and the other without the seed layer, were characterized using various analytical techniques. The WCA of the fabric with the seed layer was measured to be 153° compared to 142° of the fabric without the seed layer. The modified omniphobic fabric with the seed layer made a contact angle of 132° with SAE 40 motor oil indicating its oleophobicity while non-treated fabric made no measurable contact angle. In addition to that, the treated fabric is omniphobic against milk tea, coffee, coconut oil, and ethanol. The morphological analysis using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of the treated and non-treated fabrics revealed that the particle size of the seed layer applied fabric was ranging from 100−300 nm and upon the TDM application it became less than 100 nm. Elemental analysis by EDS showed the presence of fluorine in the composite and FT-IR analysis confirmed that the polymerization of TDM has indeed taken place. The polymerization of fluoropolymer was further confirmed by TGA and DSC analyses. The durability of the fabrics was tested and the contact angle of the surface-modified fabric remained unchanged even after 1.5 h washing and 50 cycles of abrasion. The modified fabric is robust and no change was observed in the color of the fabric during the process. More importantly, the fabric modification method in this work is simple, low cost and quick.