An Easy Way To Make Self-Cleaning Paint

A modified nanoclay has helped researchers turn ordinary paint into water-repelling, self-cleaning paint.

AsianScientist (Apr. 12, 2017) – Using a modified nanoclay, researchers at Hefei Institute of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Science have developed a simple method to produce self-cleaning paints from ordinary paint. Their results have been published in Applied Clay Science.

Most traditional paints are hydrophilic and thus tend to be contaminated by pollutants, requiring expensive cleaning manpower to upkeep. However, existing approaches to make paints self-cleaning by increasing their hydrophobicity are complicated and expensive, preventing their large-scale adoption.

In the present study, a team of researchers led by Professor Wu Zhengyan developed a self-cleaning paint by modifying a clay material called palygorskite with amino silicon oil (ASO) and aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES). The addition of ASO and APTES caused palygorskite to form a large number of nanoclusters, thereby significantly increasing the roughness and amount of hydrophobic groups on the originally hydrophilic palygorskite.

This procedure converted the nanoclay into a super-hydrophobic material due to a reduction of the number of hydroxyl groups on the surface of the clay. The resulting nanoclay could be used as a high-performance agent turn ordinary paint into superhydrophobic, self-cleaning paint in a simple and affordable manner.

“We managed to develop a facile and low-cost method to fabricate super-hydrophobic paint suitable for practical applications,” said Wu.

The article can be found at: Zhou et al. (2017) A Facile Approach to Fabricate Self-cleaning Paint.

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Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences; Photo: s_gibson72/Flickr/CC.
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