Alkaline hydrolysis: A facile method to manufacture superhydrophobic polyester fabric by fluorocarbon coating

▸ A facile procedure for manufacturing ultrahydrophobic polyester fabric was established. ▸ The usefulness of the conventional polyester weight reduction process to control surface roughness for engineering superhydrophobic fabric was introduced. ▸ A required dual scale surface roughness was created by both woven structure and creation of pits caused by alkaline hydrolysis and compared with method of using nanoparticles. ▸ This novel method not only does not need nanoparticles but also does not show any adverse effect on the samples tensile strength, abrasion resistance, as well as permeability to air. ▸ A new method was introduced for objective and subjective evaluation of the most important property of textiles with lotus leaf effect, self-cleaning. For the fabrication of the “lotus-type” fibers a combination of two major requirements, low surface energy and the magnified of the degree of roughness, should be utilized. In this research, the possible surface roughening effect of alkaline hydrolysis of the polyester fibers was applied to manipulate surface topography while fluorocarbon polymer layer generates low surface energy. The results were compared with the method which created variety of surface roughness by changing the size of the nano-silica particles using the 3M water/oil repellency test, sliding (tilt) angle, microscopy (SEM), decay of hydrophobicity, self-cleaning, tensile properties, abrasion fastness, and air permeability. The results indicated the usefulness of the conventional polyester weight reduction process to control surface roughness for engineering superhydrophobic fabric with sliding angle as low as 7°. Due to the applied conditions this process presents new facile procedure for industrial scale manufacturing of ultrahydrophobic polyester fabric.