Superhydrophobic Wood Surfaces: Recent Developments and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Wood is a renewable material that has been widely utilized as indoor and outdoor construction and decoration material in our daily life. Although wood has many advantages (i.e., light weight, high strength, low price and easy machinability), it has some drawbacks that influence dimensional stability, cracking and decay resistance in real practical applications. To mitigate these issues, superhydrophobic surfaces have been introduced to wood substrates, creating superhydrophobic wood surfaces (SHWSs) that can improve stability, water resistance, ultraviolet radiation resistance and flame retardancy. Herein, the recent developments and future perspectives of SHWSs are reviewed. Firstly, the preparation methods of SHWSs are summarized and discussed in terms of immersion, spray-coating, hydrothermal synthesis, dip-coating, deposition, sol-gel process and other methods, respectively. Due to the characteristics of the above preparation methods and the special properties of wood substrates, multiple methods are suggested to be combined to prepare SHWSs rather than each individual method. Secondly, the versatile practical applications of SHWSs are introduced, including anti-fungi/anti-bacteria, oil/water separation, fire-resistance, anti-ultraviolet irradiation, electromagnetic interference shielding, photocatalytic performance, and anti-icing. When discussing these practical applications, the advantages of SHWSs and the reason why SHWSs can be used in such applications are also mentioned. Finally, we provide with perspectives and outlooks for the future developments and applications of SHWSs, expecting to extend the utilization of SHWSs in our daily life and industry.

Superhydrophobic Non-Metallic Surfaces with Multiscale Nano/Micro-Structure: Fabrication and Application

“…The sol-gel method offers a well-established route for creating superhydrophobic surfaces on non-metallic substrates [58]. Despite limitations in morphology controllability through spraying or dipping [59,60], it still provides a versatile platform for doping new materials and is compatible with various substrates [61][62][63], enhancing the possibilities of the surface design. Nonetheless, due to its numerous advantages, the sol-gel method remains one of the important methods for preparing superhydrophobic surfaces with multiscale structures on non-metallic materials.…”

Enhanced dimensional stability of straw-based biocomposites modified with UV light-cured coatings

“…The dimensional stability of wood or non-wood composites is an important characteristic of consumer concern that demands comprehensive understanding (Okuda and Sato 2007;Yuan et al 2014Yuan et al , 2019. Under normal circumstances, a waterproof barrier can be achieved by completely covering the surface of the composite board with a dense polymer layer or coating (Gao et al 2023;Liu et al 2023;Tao et al 2023). The application of nanotechnology has been shown to improve the surface properties of materials, leading to their high durability.…”