United States. A moth eye and a lotus leaf were the inspirations for a repellent or superhydrophobic anti-glare glass coating that holds significant potential for panels, lenses, detectors, windows, weapon systems and many other products.
The discovery made by researchers at the Oak Ridge Department of Energy's National Laboratory, detailed in a paper, is based on a nanostructured layer of mechanically robust porous glass film. The coating can be customized to be superhydrophobic, resistant to resistant fog and anti-reflective.
"While lotus leaves repel water and self-clean when it rains, a moth's eyes are anti-reflective due to the natural coated conical nanostructures in which the refractive index gradually increases as light travels to the moth's cornea," said Tolga Aytug, lead author of the paper and a member of ORNL's Chemical Materials Group. "Together, these features provide skills for designing coatings of specific properties and performance."
"We have developed a method that begins with the deposition of a thin layer of glass on a glass surface, followed by thermal processing and removal of selective material by chemical attack," he said. "This produces a surface consisting of a porous three-dimensional network of high-silica glass that resembles microscopic coral."
