IIT Guwahati develops self-healable solid slippery coating

The coating shows self-healing of repetitive (50 times) physical damages in less than one minute and the embedded slippery property remains intact.  

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati have developed a self-healable amphiphobic solid slippery coating that exhibits sliding of droplets of various liquids, including that of water, polar and non-polar organic solvents, edible oil, motor, engine and crude oils.  

It also shows self-healing of repetitive (50 times) physical damages in less than one minute and the embedded slippery property remains intact. Also, the surface can withstand prolonged exposures to various complex aqueous phases (pH 2, pH 12, SDS, and DTAB contaminated water, river water, seawater) and UV irradiation for 15 days. Substrate independence and scalable fabrication process are other crucial features of the current design.  

The coating has been developed on various substrates such as glass, aluminum foil, printed paper, plastic, etc, as well as geometrically complex objects such as curved surfaces, inside of a glass bottle, etc. The simple fabrication process also allows coating on a large glass object (1325 cm2). 

Coating displays self-cleaning ability

To avoid the problem of infused fluorinated lubricant leaching, IIT Guwahati’s team developed simple and scalable fabrication of a non-fluorinated, substrate-independent and self-healable amphiphobic solid slippery coating. A hydrophilic porous polymeric coating has been strategically infused with a selected comb-like polymer to develop a crystalline network. Eventually, a self-healing and amphiphobic solid-slippery interface was obtained at the end. 

The bottle that is decorated with such coating allowed traceless dispense of a viscous food item, i.e. honey with ease. Moreover, such coating protected the display of cell phones from any aqueous and oily contaminations. The prepared optically transparent solid slippery coating displayed self-cleaning ability. 

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