Journal of Materials Science, Vol.49, No.5, 1931-1946, 2014
Tunable wettability on Pendelic marble: could an inorganic marble surface behave as a "self-cleaning" biological surface?
The sustainable protection of the Greek cultural heritage aims to strengthen Pendelic marble, to preserve its unique esthetic properties and its resistance to long weathering. Our main purpose was to design, apply, and study a system of controllable wettability appropriate to the hydrophilic nature of the surface of Pendelic marble. A very simple, cost effective, and easily reproducible method has been developed, to fabricate a composite protective hybrid nanostructured film via a bio-mimetic route. This is a modern technological method for self-cleaning surfaces mimicking nature's phenomena and structures, such as the Lotus leaf hierarchical nano/microstructure. Our approach differs from the conventional conservation methods in that it is based on a top coating with nanostructured synthesis, consisting of a hydrophilic/hydrophobic silica mixture dispersed in organic solvents, applied by "alla prima" technique onto a fluorosilanic base matrix that has been coated onto Pendelic marble. The behavior of this new surface is critically examined in this document.