Mohammad Reza Shaeri
Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc.
Dongsheng Guan
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 3200 N Cramer Street, Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA
Fangyu Cao
George Mason University; Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc., Lancaster, PA 17601, USA
Chris Yingchun Yuan
Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA
Atomic layer deposition (ALD) was used to develop hydrophobic and water-repellent glass fiber cloths for operation in high temperatures up to 200°C. The cloths were deposited with highly conformal, pinhole-free, and uniform Al2O3 films with a thickness at 200 nm. The characteristics of the deposited films were studied using a scanning electron microscope. While the uncoated cloth was hydrophilic with an equilibrium contact angle around 40°, the ALD-coated cloth became hydrophobic with an equilibrium contact angle around 125°. Such a hydrophobicity resulted in an excellent water repellant characteristic, as such, while non-coated cloth absorbed the water immediately, the ALD-coated cloth showed a resistance against water transport into the nanoscale-coated fiber cloth for over 10 hours. This characteristic was maintained in the ALD-coated cloth after thermal cycling processes by heating the coated cloth up to 200°C for one hour. The present study would open a new research direction to leverage ALD for developing water-repellent glass fiber cloths in high-temperature applications, such as those for developing high-temperature wire insulations.