title: Transparent anti-stain coatings with good thermal and mechanical properties based on polyimide-silica nanohybrids.
abstract: In this work, we synthesized polyimide/silica hybrid materials via sol-gel method using a fluorinated poly(amic acid) silane precursor and a variety of perfluorosilane contents. We studied the influence of a hybrid coating film with the following characteristics; hydrophobicity, oleophobicity, optical transparency, and surface hardness of the coating films. The hybrid coatings with the fluorosilane contents up to 10 wt% are optically transparent and present good thermal stability with a degradation temperature of > 500 degrees C as well as a glass transition of > 300 degrees C. Both water contact angle and oil contact angle increase rapidly with introducing small amount of the fluorosilane in the hybrids and reaches the maximum of 115 degrees and 61 degrees, respectively. The hardness of the hybrid coatings increases up to 5H with an increase of the FTES content in the hybrids. These colorless, transparent, and thermally stable hybrid materials could be suitable for applications as anti-stain coatings.
authors.affiliation: Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Pusan National University, Busan 609-735, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Myeon-Cheon
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: Giju
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Sung
authors.forename: Saravanan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nagappan
authors.forename: Mi-Jeong
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Chang-Sik
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Ha