Transparent Metasurfaces Counteracting Fogging by Harnessing Sunlight

Surface fogging is a common phenomenon that can have significant and detrimental effects on surface transparency and visibility. It affects the performance in a wide range of applications including windows, windshields, electronic displays, cameras, mirrors, and eyewear. A host of ongoing research is aimed at combating this problem by understanding and developing stable and effective antifogging coatings that are capable of handling a wide range of environmental challenges "passively" without consumption of electrical energy. Here we introduce an alternative approach employing sunlight to go beyond state-of-the-art techniques, such as superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic coatings, by rationally engineering solar absorbing metasurfaces that maintain transparency, while upon illumination induce localized heating to significantly delay the onset of surface fogging or decrease defogging time. For the same environmental conditions, we demonstrate that our metasurfaces are able to reduce defogging time by up to 4-fold and under supersaturated conditions inhibit the nucleation of condensate outperforming conventional state-of-the-art approaches in terms of visibility retention. Our research illustrates a durable and environmentally sustainable approach to passive antifogging and defogging for transparent surfaces. This work opens up the opportunity for large-scale manufacturing that can be applied to a range of materials, including polymers and other flexible substrates.