Study On Bionic Condensate Self-transport Nanostructured Surfaces

Condensation is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature and industry processes such as power generation, thermal management and energy utilization, and environmental management. However, condensates are prone to stay on the conventional material surfaces, which may cause frosting and icing issues of materials and sharply decline thermal conductive property. Thus, how to explore high-performance condensation surfaces via micro/nanoengineering technologies has attracted intensive interest due to their values in academic researches and technological applications such as antifrosting, anti-icing, anti-corrosion, moisture self-cleaning and enhanced heat transfer. Herein, inspired by bio-surfaces, we studied bionic nanostructured surfaces with high-efficiency condensate microdrops self-transport(CMDST) performance based on fabrication of porous nanoparticle films and superhydrophobic-hydrophilic hybrid interfaces, respectively.1) According to the basic principle of simultaneously controlling extremely low solid-liquid interface adhesion and submicrometer interspace of building blocks to achieve the CMDST, we designed a type of novel copper-based porous nanoparticle film. A facile electrodeposition method based on control over the preferential crystal growth of isotropic nanoparticles and the synergistic use of tiny hydrogen bubbles as pore making templates was proposed for the in situ growth of cerium oxide porous nanoparticle films on copper surfaces. Our studies demonstrated that, compared with hydrophobic flat copper surfaces, nanosamples own the desired CMDST function.2) We proposed a skillful strategy of utilizing small-scale condensate microdrops as templates to in situ introduce microscale hydrophilic patches on superhydrophobic CMDST surfaces, where condensate drops not only act as discrete “adhesives” for randomly “capturing” polyvinyl akohol(PVA) containing fogdrops but constrain the contact area between the nanosurface and PVA-containing merged drops due to their suspending state. Via evaluating the solid-liquid interface adhesive forces of samples with different spraying time, we obtained the optimal superhydrophobic-hydrophilic hybrid sample, which has not too high interface adhesive force. Our studies indicated that, compared with homogenous superhydrophobic surfaces, optimal hybrid sample owns more efficient self-transport ability of condensate microdrops.The as-synthesized porous nanoparticle films and superhydrophobic-hydrophilic hybrid films all exhibit high-efficiency condensate microdrop self-transport property, which offers new avenue for designing and developing high-efficiency condensation nanotextured surfaces.