Recent Progress in Super Hydrophobic/Hydrophilic Self-Cleaning Surfaces for Various Industrial Applications: A Review

The growing interest in self-clean coatings owes to their low maintenance cost, high durability, and immense potential applications. Such coatings, for instance, may offer useful resistance against fouling, icing, smear, corrosion and possesses oil-water separation capability. Hence, the design and development of self-cleaning materials is an area of significant interest to researchers worldwide. This exploration prospectus critically reviews and highlights various types of self-cleaning surfaces, their applications, working mechanisms, and fabrication techniques used globally. The comprehensive literature study suggests that an extensive study of surface behavior towards water and oil may jointly determine its self-cleaning nature.