Achieving Superhydrophobicity of Zr-Based Metallic Glass Surfaces with Tunable Adhesion by Nanosecond Laser Ablation and Annealing

Abstract

Tuning the surface wettability and adhesion of metallic glasses (MGs) is a promising approach to enrich their engineering applications. In this study, using nanosecond laser ablation in air, hierarchical micro/nanostructures were directly fabricated on a Zr-based MG surface. Following subsequent annealing, the surface exhibited superhydrophobicity (maximum contact angle: 166°, minimum sliding angle: 2°). Furthermore, the superhydrophobic surface could be tuned from low to high surface adhesion force by controlling the laser-ablated spot interval. By analyzing the laser-ablated structures and surface chemical compositions, the superhydrophobicity was related to the formation of hierarchical micro/nanostructures and the absorption of organic compounds with low surface free energy in air, and the change in surface adhesion force was attributed to the difference in surface roughness. The experimental results showed that the superhydrophobic surface with low adhesion force could be used in self-cleaning applications, while the superhydrophobic surfaces with different adhesion forces could be used in no-loss liquid transportation. This study provides an efficient and low-cost way to fabricate superhydrophobic MG surfaces with tunable adhesion, which will broaden the functional applications of MGs.

Review on Biocompatibility and Prospect Biomedical Applications of Novel Functional Metallic Glasses

“…Moreover, it was demonstrated that surface pattering can be performed for Zr-based BMG [ 96 ] to improve cells adhesion and optimize the healing process in the case of implants. In very recent research, the possibility of laser treatment to control the surface parameters and adhesion for Zr-based metallic glasses was discovered [ 97 , 98 ], which also provides the prospects for further improvement of material-cell interaction.…”

Preparation of Multiscale Slippery Liquid‐Infused Porous Surface Based on Ti6Al4V Alloy with Self‐Cleaning, Stability, and Self‐Healing Properties

“…Wettability on the solid surface is usually closely related to structures and surface chemical composition. [1,53] Herein, the wettability of the PS, SHS, and SLIPS was characterized using contact angles (CAs) and SAs measured by OCAMS. In order to record the accurate data of CAs and SAs, the average value obtained from five measurements at different parts of the surface was used as the final result.…”

“…It can be seen from the figure that the SA decreased gradually with the increase of the volume of the test droplet at the same temperature, that is, the larger the droplet volume is, the easier the sliding movement of the droplet will be. This process could be explained by Equation (1).…”

“…Nowadays, creating a robust superhydrophobic surface (SHS) with excellent water-repellent properties inspired by lotus leaf has attracted extensive attention, [1][2][3][4][5] which is believed to be able to solve a large number of engineering problems. In pace with deepening correlational research, however, many scholars and researchers found that SHSs actually have faced a lot of practical application problems, such as being damaged physically easily, failure under extreme environments with high pressure, high temperature, high humidity, and so on, which greatly limited its generality and functionality.…”

“…Compared with the traditional processing methods and chemical methods, laser etching is a promising method to fabricate the functional surfaces due to its high efficiency, low pollution, low thermal damage, wide processing range, and contactless treatment. [1,35,47] Particularly, the nanosecond laser can realize large-scale industrial production because it costs less and is more efficient compared with picosecond and femtosecond lasers. More importantly, it possesses good precise controllability which can process precise micro-/nanostructures on the base materials.…”