Fabrication of transparent and superhydrophobic nanopaper via coating hybrid SiO2/MWCNTs composite

Congcan Shi; Zhenhua Wu; Junfei Xu; Qiqi Wu; Dongjian Li; Guangxue Chen; Minghui He; Junfei Tian

doi:10.1016/j.carbpol.2019.115229

Fabrication of transparent and superhydrophobic nanopaper via coating hybrid SiO₂/MWCNTs composite

Carbohydr Polym. 2019 Dec 1:225:115229. doi: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2019.115229. Epub 2019 Aug 21.

Authors

Congcan Shi¹, Zhenhua Wu¹, Junfei Xu¹, Qiqi Wu¹, Dongjian Li¹, Guangxue Chen¹, Minghui He¹, Junfei Tian²

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Pulp and Paper Engineering, School of Light Industry and Engineering, Guangzhou 510640, PR China.
² State Key Laboratory of Pulp and Paper Engineering, School of Light Industry and Engineering, Guangzhou 510640, PR China. Electronic address: jftian_scut@163.com.

PMID: 31521295
DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2019.115229

Abstract

Nanopaper prepared from cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) is a kind of promising substrate for various high-tech devices. However, several drawbacks including poor water stability and weak corrosion resistance still remain, which limit the practical applications of the nanopaper. Herein, we present a simple and low-cost method for fabricating transparent and superhydrophobic nanopaper by spraying fluorinated silica/multi-walled carbon nanotubes (SiO₂/MWCNTs) composite on the nanopaper. A series of functional nanopaper were fabricated, which shows excellent performance of water repellency, chemical stability, conductivity, thermostability and self-cleaning property. Among them, the nanopaper modified with the composite containing 0.5 wt% MWCNTs has a water contact angle of about 163°, transparency of 79.96% and the sheet resistance of 3.15 × 10⁶ Ω sq^-1. The combination of the promising features in a material offers attractive prospects, and enables our nanopaper could be tailored for emerging applications such as flexible electronics, display protection and intelligent packages.

Keywords: Cellulose nanofiber; Conductivity; Fluorinated silica; Superhydrophobicity; Transparency.