Fabrication And Study Of Superhydorphobic And Superamphiphobic Materials

Nano materials especially functional nano materials (such as superhydorphobic and superamphiphobic materials ect.) have attracted much attention because of their promising applications in our daily life and industrial applications. Surface wettability is governed by the microstructure and surface energy of a solid; thus the surface wettability can be controlled by the modulation of surface energy and roughness of a solid. In the present dissertation, several factional surfaces with special wettability were designed and constructed by manipulating chemical compositions and surface roghness. By use of several techniques, we have succeeded in controlling micro/nanostructures, and surface wettability, and consequently bridging the gap between surfaces with special wettability and practical applications.1. Superhydrophobic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) surface containing micro- and nanobinary structures is created by duplicating the microstructures of a rose petal. The resulting surface has the same microstructures and high adhesive property with rose petal; interestingly, this surface can hold water droplets through very strong adhesive forces. Furthermore, the resulting surface has another important property; it shows superhydrophobic property in a wide range of pH values from 1.07 to 13.76. Therefore, it is believed that the as-prepared surface can be used in the fabrication of chemical engineering materials, microfluidic devices and the transportation of small amount of corrosive liquids.2. A super-amphiphobic surface with a dandelion-like structure is fabricated by a simple one-step solution method, and this obtained surface exhibits contact angles lager than 150o for both water and oil. The low contact angle hysteresis for both water and oil droplets endows this super-amphiphobic surface with an excellent self-cleaning property, so that both water and oil droplets can roll off the surface with a tilt angle smaller than 5o. More importantly, such a super-amphiphobic surface shows excellent thermal and chemical stabilities, which may provide an alternative method beyond the traditional principles to solve some practical industry problems, such as the self-cleaning of buildings and the reduction of friction in heavy oil transportation.3. A simple one-step electrodeposition process is developed for the fabrication of superhydrophobic surfaces on a series of substrates such as copper, titanium, iron, zinc, aluminum, and stannum. The hierarchical micro- and nanostructures endow these surfaces with excellent superhydrophobicity and the resulting surfaces show superhydrophobicity even for some corrosive liquids including salt solutions and acidic and basic solutions at all pH values. Importantly, this approach can be easily applied to other systems such as the fabrication of superamphiphobic surfaces as long as the substrates are electrically conductive.