Fabrication of omniphobic and superomniphobic surfaces
Date
2017
Authors
Pendurthi, Anudeep, author
Kota, Arun K., advisor
Yalin, Azer P., advisor
Kipper, Matt J., committee member
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Abstract
Superomniphobic surfaces (i.e., surfaces that are extremely repellent to both high surface tension liquids like water and low surface tension liquid like oils and alcohols) can be fabricated through a combination of surface chemistry that imparts low solid surface energy and a re-entrant surface texture. Recently, surface texturing with lasers has received significant attention because laser texturing is scalable, solvent-free, and can produce a monolithic texture (i.e., a texture that is an integral part of the surface unlike a coating that is deposited on the underlying substrate) on virtually any material. In this work, we fabricated nanostructured omniphobic and superomniphobic surfaces with stainless steel 430, stainless steel 316, stainless steel 304, titanium, aluminum and glass surfaces using a simple, inexpensive and commercially available CO2 laser engraver. Further, we demonstrated that the nanostructured omniphobic and superomniphobic surfaces fabricated using our laser texturing technique can be used to design patterned surfaces, surfaces with discrete domains of the desired wettability and on-surface microfluidic devices. Systematic experiments were conducted to evaluate the importance of various laser parameters to fabricate these omniphobic and superomniphobic surfaces. Also, the performance of these surfaces under adverse acidic and basic conditions was evaluated systematically. In addition to surface texturing with lasers, in this work, we also report a simple and versatile method to fabricate superomniphobic glass microfiber paper by growing silicone nanofilaments using trichloromethylsilane (TCMS).
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Subject
laser ablation
re-entrant texture
CO2 laser
superomniphobic
nanostructure