Self-cleaning and anti-fogging surfaces based on nanostructured metal oxides

Self-cleaning and anti-fogging technology is already used in a variety of the products today, among which glazing products prevail. Their function is based on the two principles, either hydrophobic (Lotus effect) or photocatalytic hydrophilic principle. In the latter case, self-cleaning action is based on the combination of photocatalysis and photoinduced superhydrophilicity, where dirt removal by uniform spreading of water over the whole surface is improved with photocatalytic decomposition of organic contaminants. There is a big room to play and a huge potential to improve the properties of existing self-cleaning and anti-fogging surfaces by designing and tailoring new nanoarchitectures of the light-activated thin films. In this lecture we report about the latest achievements and relevance of nanostructured metal oxide surfaces for specific application in photocatalytic self cleaning. The emphasis is given to the preparation and structure-property relationship of nanocomposite materials based on TiO2 (TiO2-SiO2) and ZnO (ZnO/Co3O4). The emphasis is given also to determination of photocatalytic self-cleaning activity by quantitative and sensitive methods such as fluorescence detection of the first degradation product of terephthalic acid.