Macroscale scratch-resistant glasses with large-area graphene oxide depositions

Abstract

Adding to the inferior mechanical performance, scratches on glasses compromise their service life and optical functionalities. Here, we demonstrate that coating large-area generic glass surfaces with protective graphene oxide (GO) films results in superior scratch resistance. To this extent, we employ an aqueous dispersion of GO as a precursor to deposit films on soda-lime-silica glass via manual smearing. Further, through macroscale reciprocating scratch tests, we observe that the GO depositions substantially minimize the friction by ∼67 % while being thin enough to negligibly affect the optical transparency. Moreover, the postmortem wear analysis confirms the mitigated abrasion and plastic deformation of the glass in conjunction with the interfacial GO films. Thus, the present work demonstrates a promising and scalable approach toward enhancing the scratch resistance of glasses with dispersion-derived two-dimensional materials.