Superhydrophobic materials and coatings: a review

Abstract

Over the past few years, the scientific community, as well as the world's coatings industry has seen the introduction of oxide/polymer-based superhydrophobic surfaces and coatings with exceptional water repellency. Online videos have caught the public's imagination by showing people walking through mud puddles without getting their tennis shoes wet or muddy, and water literally flying off coated surfaces. This article attempts to explain the basics of this behavior and to discuss and explain the latest superhydrophobic technological breakthroughs. Since superhydrophobic surfaces and coatings can fundamentally change how water interacts with surfaces, and the fact that earth is a water world, it can legitimately be said that this technology has the potential to literally change the world.

Influence of hydrophobicity on ice accumulation process under sleet and wind conditions

“…24,26,27 It is feasible to use these three parameters to define the hydrophobicity and icephobicity regardless of the preparation method. 28 The research results can apply to other hydrophobic surfaces with similar CA and CAH. Similar to simulation analysis, three types of silicone acrylate resin hydrophobic coating samples with high hydrophobicity are prepared and tested in this study.…”

Mussel-inspired chemistry for preparation of superhydrophobic surfaces on porous substrates

“…These bionic articial superhydrophobic surfaces can be constructed by periodically or randomly distributed micro/ nano roughness structures with appropriate surface chemical compositions, for potential applications in anti-bioadhesion, anticorrosion, antifouling, anti-icing, self-cleaning, drag reduction, and adsorption separation. 2 Various methods have been developed to construct superhydrophobic surfaces, including chemical vapor deposition, chemical etching, sol-gel technique, solution-immersion, and template processing. [3][4][5][6] However, some methods require harsh conditions and specialized experimental reagents and equipment, or are tedious and time-consuming, or are mainly focused on one kind of small-scale substrate, limiting practical application.…”

Fabrication of an Anisotropic Superhydrophobic Polymer Surface Using Compression Molding and Dip Coating

“…Among them, lotus leaves are typical isotropic superhydrophobic surfaces which can clean dust on the leaves by easy rolling of water droplets along all directions. Many artificial isotropic superhydrophobic surfaces inspired by nature have been fabricated by making nano or microscale surface patterns and low surface energy material coatings using various different fabrication methods, such as lithography, templating, chemical deposition, laser surface texturing, and nanoparticle coating [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. In nature, rice leaves and butterfly wings have special anisotropic wettability and the water droplet can be easily moved along a certain direction, such as the direction parallel to the leaf edge in rice leaves or the radial outward direction of the body's central axis in butterfly wings.…”

“…The lines or grooves have been fabricated by lithography, embossing, imprinting, laser machining, the formation of wrinkles via mechanical compressing, or other fabrication methods [13,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. For mass production of an anisotropic wetting surface, replication of patterns using a mold seems to be suitable, but many studies have used poly(methyl methacrylate) (PDMS), which has a relatively long curing time and limited reusability of the mold [13,[18][19][20][21], and molds with an uncontrollable surface roughness and side wall slope by laser machining and wrinkle formation, which does not show a clear pattern shape [7][8][9][10][11]13]. Additionally, the high surface energy ink pattern printing method can create various anisotropic superhydrophobic surfaces with low cost and large scale production especially 2D paper based applications [29].…”