Nano silicone oil pools with wear-responsive secretion for enhancing self-healing in hard anti-smudge coatings

Achieving hard anti-smudge coatings that combine self-healing of lubricant-impregnated surfaces and omniphobicity of liquid-like surfaces presents a critical challenge. To address this issue, nanoscale silicone oil pools were generated by emulsifying silicone oil with an amphiphilic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-bearing polysiloxane sol, which were then incorporated into the methyltrimethoxysilane-derived sol to create mechanically robust, transparent, and self-healing coatings. The key was the employment of both a PDMS network and single-end grafted PDMS brushes, with the former providing molecular-level channels for the secretion of silicone oil molecules and the latter strengthening the dynamic omniphobicity of hard coatings. Additionally, the tight physical entanglement between the cross-linked PDMS network and the silicone oil imparts excellent resistance to fluid erosion, thereby ensuring long-term anti-smudge performance.