Development of polymer-based superhydrophobic coating on cloth

Facile, one-step fabrication of durable, superhydrophobic (water contact angle ∼ 154 ∘ ) fluorine-free polymer coating on cotton cloth is presented. The microstructure of the coating is evaluated with electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction study. The detailed analysis reflects that the superhydrophobicity is rendered by intrinsic hydrophobic nature of the non-polar polymer, isotactic polypropylene. The chemical and mechanical stability of the coating on cloth is evaluated and it shows that the coating is extremely resilient in nature without almost negligible sacrifice in water contact angle. Because of simplicity of fabrication technique and quality of coating, this study is expected to be worthy enough for commodity as well as high technology applications.