Abstract

Antireflection, self-cleaning coatings are widely used in various applications such as display panels, solar cells and optical lenses [1]. Many surfaces in nature are highly hydrophobic, making the deposition of a water drop almost impossible. Examples include the wings of butterflies and the leaves of plants. The best known illustration of a self-cleaning surface is indubitably that of the leaves of the lotus plant (Nelumbo nucifera) [2]. The key feature of the lotus leaf is a microscopically rough surface consisting of randomly distributed arrays of micropapillae with length-scale ranging from 5 to 200 microns. In order to obtain this biomimetic surface, several approaches have been proposed mostly based on sol-gel method [3,4].

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