Aging and recovery of superhydrophobic silicone rubber under electrical and non-electrical stresses

Silicone rubber is widely used in the outdoor insulation for its hydrophobicity, at the same time, superhydrophobic surface with self-clean property is more ideal for outdoor insulating material. This paper reports an efficient way to fabricate the superhydrophobic silicone rubber whose contact angle reaches 151° and sliding angle reaches 5°. The long term stability of polymeric superhydrophobic insulating surfaces is examined under electrical and non-electrical stresses. The result shows that in the water aging process, the static contact angle of both SIR and superhydrophobic SIR can recover, but the dynamic contact angle shows a little recovery. In the corona aging process, both the static and dynamic contact angle of superhydrophobic SIR can almost restore to the original level, but the dynamic contact angle of normal SIR increases after restoration. The finding shows that micro-nano surface structure and the stability of the surface chemical composition are important for the anti-aging performance of the superhydrophobic SIR.