Recent Progress and Future Directions of Multifunctional (Super)Wetting Smooth/Structured Surfaces and Coatings

Abstract

Research on superwetting surfaces/coatings that artificially mimic biological surfaces/systems has a long history, and still garners significant worldwide interest as it is expected to provide superior solutions to conventional engineering approaches that attempt to solve challenges facing mankind. To broaden the utility of these superwetting surfaces/coatings, there is a strong demand for these surfaces to exhibit multiple practical functionalities. Here, the progress being made in multifunctional surfaces with superwettability is explored. In each section, state‐of‐the‐art works are summarized and the concepts, materials, processes, and the effects of both physical (smooth or structured surfaces) and chemical (low or high surface energies) factors on the resulting surface are described. Finally, the outlook of this prospective research field is considered, and its future directions briefly discussed, with a focus on preserving longevity in both functionality and structural integrity to produce truly useful biomimetic surfaces/coatings.

Phase-Change Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces with Thermo-Responsive Wetting and Shedding States

“…S pw is defined with respect to the individual interfacial tensions of paraffin wax-air (σ pa ), water-air (σ wa ), and water-paraffin wax (σ wp ) as in Equation 1. 2,34,44 S pw = σ wa ₋ σ wp ₋ σ pa (1) Upon droplet shedding from the surface, cloaking may result in direct deterioration of the SLIPSs as the shedding of a droplet carries the lubricant away inducing the depletion of the lubricant. A robust surface where the lubricant does not cloak a water droplet should meet the criterion of negative spreading coefficient as S pw < 0, and contrarily, S pw > 0 shows the occurrence of cloaking.…”

Programming Multiphase Media Superwetting States in the Oil–Water–Air System: Evolutions in Hydrophobic–Hydrophilic Surface Heterogeneous Chemistry

“…Superwetting control emerged as a popular topic in fundamental interface science field and can directly affect specific effects on solid surface in certain environment media, and would provide a powerful toolbox to solve complex and challenging problems in academic and industrial fields, [ 1–7 ] for example, efficiency and selectivity in catalysis process, [ 8,9 ] controllability in printing and patterning, [ 10,11 ] and sensitivity in surface analysis. [ 12,13 ] Although considerable attempts have recently been made to design and construct multifunctional superwetting surfaces, [ 4,14–20 ] especially for superantiwetting surfaces, [ 21–26 ] the defined superantiwetting states can only perform in single certain environment media, causing most of the significant interfacial applications to not be achieved in different media. For example, an inevitable antifouling failure is usually observed on dry underwater superoleophobic surfaces where oils can easily wet and contaminate the whole superhydrophilic surface in air.…”

“…DOI: 10.1002/adma.202004875 considerable attempts have recently been made to design and construct multifunctional superwetting surfaces, [4,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20] especially for superantiwetting surfaces, [21][22][23][24][25][26] the defined superantiwetting states can only perform in single certain environment media, causing most of the significant interfacial applications to not be achieved in different media. For example, an inevitable antifouling failure is usually observed on dry underwater superoleophobic surfaces where oils can easily wet and conta minate the whole superhydrophilic surface in air.…”

Super-spreading on superamphiphilic micro-organized nanochannel anodic aluminum oxide surfaces for heat dissipation

“…Nature-inspired surfaces with extreme wettability have been widely studied ( Archer et al., 2020 ; Aussillous and Quere, 2001 ; Chen et al., 2018 ). For example, nature-inspired artificial superhydrophobic surfaces are widely applied in various fields including self-cleaning, anti-icing, power generation, catalysis, liquid manipulation, and so forth ( Liu et al., 2019 ; Sun et al., 2019 ; Tian et al., 2016 ; Zhu et al., 2021 ).…”