Fabrication of robust and thermally stable superhydrophobic nanocomposite coatings based on thermoplastic polyurethane and silica nanoparticles

•Superhydrophobic coatings were prepared from an intrinsically hydrophilic polymer.•The superhydrophobicity remained intact at elevated temperatures.•Polyurethane plays a key role in improving the mechanical robustness of the coatings.•A complete surface coverage of nanosilica is necessary for superhydrophobicity. In this paper, superhydrophobic nanocomposite coatings based on thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) and modified nanosilica were fabricated using a simple solution-based method. The main challenge was to impart superhydrophobicity to an intrinsically hydrophilic polymer substrate. The prepared nanocomposite coatings were characterized by means of scanning electron microscopy, confocal microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Based on the obtained results, it was proved that in order to achieve superhydrophobicity, no TPU macromolecule should be present on the coating's top layer, thus a complete coverage of coating's top layer by nanosilica particles was necessary for achieving ultra water repellent coatings. Mechanical and thermal resistance of the coatings, which are the main challenges in commercializing superhydrophobic surfaces, were also studied by drop impact and thermal annealing tests, respectively. It was proved that using TPU as a sublayer results in improving mechanical resistance of the coatings as compared with the pure silica nanocoating. Moreover, the samples showed an excellent resistance against elevated temperatures (150°C) and remained superhydrophobic; however, further increment of the annealing temperatures to 200°C caused the TPU macromolecules to migrate onto the top layer of the coatings significantly reducing the water repellency, which was visually proved by SEM.