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Home » News » Coatings Technologies » Multifunctional Glass Coating offers UV Conversion and Self-cleaning
A dual-layer coating integrates omniphobic liquid repellency, anti-reflection and UV-to-visible light conversion on glass substrates. The AHP@Eu/HSNs system achieves 93.6 % transmittance and withstands 10⁵ abrasion cycles, offering potential for durable protection of solar panels and optical devices.
Spectral mismatch, surface reflection and contamination significantly reduce the power conversion efficiency of photovoltaic panels. The authors address these challenges simultaneously through a multilayer architecture, combining a fluorescent, liquid-repellent top layer (AHP@Eu sol) with an anti-reflective base layer of hollow silica nanoparticles (HSNs) to form the AHP@Eu/HSNs coating. In the top layer, hexamethylene diisocyanate trimer (HDIT) acts as a dual-functional crosslinker: it covalently anchors monohydroxyl-terminated polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS-OH) to an acid-catalysed silica sol network, while excess crosslinking reinforces mechanical robustness.
Surface-enriched flexible PDMS chains provide exceptional omniphobicity, enabling dynamic desorption of contaminants from a quasi-liquid-like interface. An embedded Eu(TTA)₃Phen complex converts harmful ultraviolet light (200–400 nm) into harvestable visible light (400–800 nm), addressing the significant spectral mismatch that contributes to energy losses in silicon photovoltaic devices.
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The HSNs base layer lowers the effective refractive index and suppresses light scattering, yielding a maximum transmittance of 93.6 % across the 400–800 nm range – an increase of 2.1 % compared with bare glass. The coating combines this high optical performance with efficient down-shifting fluorescence, converting UV photons into wavelengths better matched to silicon solar cell absorption. The multifunctional architecture simultaneously addresses all three key loss mechanisms – reflection, spectral mismatch and surface soiling – within a single scalable coating system.
The AHP@Eu/HSNs coating retained its core functionalities after rigorous durability testing, including 1.0 × 10⁵ abrasion cycles at 10 kPa, 1000 tape-peel cycles, 30-day UV exposure and immersion in harsh chemicals. According to the authors, the dual-crosslinking strategy overcomes the two primary failure mechanisms of liquid-like coatings – photo-oxidative scission of flexible polymer chains and mechanical detachment from the substrate – which have hindered large-scale adoption. The system offers significant potential for solar panels and optical devices where enhanced energy conversion efficiency, extended service life and sustained surface cleanliness are required.
Source: Wang, Y. & He, J., A dual-crosslinking strategy toward durable, omniphobic, anti-reflective and light conversion multifunctional comprehensive coatings. Progress in Organic Coatings, 110370 (2026).
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