New publication on superhydrophobic surfaces
Super hydrophobic surfaces always require nanosized roughness features. However, these are intrinsically fragile and are easily destroyed even by small forces (touching, rubbing). Jonas Groten describes surfaces that retain most of their superhydrophobic character even after mechanical damage.
To improve the rather weak mechanical stability, he combined the nanostructures with regular post structures on the micrometer scale. Such structures showed under no-load conditions the same superhydrophobic wetting properties as the pure nanograss. When such structures are exposed to shearing stress, the microstructures carry much of the load, and even upon quite strong mechanical stress, the extremely hydrophobic properties are conserved. The dual-scale rough structure can thus combine two desired properties − excellent superhydrophobicity in the beginning (without much pinning at the microscale posts) and a better mechanical wear resistance compared to that ofsurfaces with only nanoscale structures.
The paper is available from the Langmuir website via dx.doi.org/10.1021/la304641q
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