A facile approach to fabricate self-cleaning paint

A self-cleaning paint was developed by adding palygorskite (Pal) modified by amino silicon oil (ASO) and aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) to traditional paint (TP). Therein, ASO and APTES could effectively make a Pal form with plenty of nano-clusters, and significantly increase the roughness and amount of hydrophobic groups on the surface of Pal. After this modification, the originally hydrophilic Pal was superhydrophobic and could be used as an effective hydrophobic agent to change the hydrophilic paint to super-hydrophobic one with high self-cleaning ability. This work provides a facile approach to fabricate a self-cleaning paint so as to significantly save the labor and lower the cost. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.