Wetting of soft superhydrophobic micropillar arrays

Abstract

We image the bending of soft micropillars as liquid drops move on them and calculate the forces hindering drop motion.

Fabrication of a flexible transparent superomniphobic polydimethylsiloxane surface with a micropillar array

“…Compared with the previously reported PDMS-based surfaces with super-repellency to liquids, 14,15,19,21 the PDMS micropillar surface we present here displays excellent superomniphobicity with high static contact angle and low contact angle hysteresis. And the nanostructure on PDMS microplillar in our work can be simply achieved by the imprint of decorated nanosilica on the SiNW mould with accurately controllable spacings.…”

“…7,8,[16][17][18] To make hierarchical micro/nano structures, methods such as stacking micro and nanospheres, 9,16 texturing bers, 17 and spray coating, 7,12,18,19 have been commonly used while fabrication of such surfaces with special surface topography such as nanopatterned micropillars, usually involves photolithography or reactive ion-etching using sophisticated tools with complex preparation process. [13][14][15][19][20][21][22][23][24] Recently, the unique structure observed on the skin of springtails has been reported to have extraordinary liquidrepellent characteristics. 25 It is believed that the so-called doubly-re-entrant structures attribute to the super-repellency.…”

A Liquid-pressure-adaptive Superhydrophobic Surface

“…To investigate the deformation of the soft head under P, we performed laser scan confocal microscope (LSCM) measurements at different liquid pressures. 32,33 Figure 2b shows that the LPASS is at the Cassie state under water at different liquid pressures (Video S1), characterized by the trapping of an air cushion within the structure of surfaces. It is known that a transition from Cassie state to the completely wetted Wenzel state can be triggered by an increase in P.…”

Behaviour of flexible superhydrophobic striped surfaces during (electro-)wetting of a sessile drop

“…We use Sylgard TM 184, a two part, thermo-curable, cross-linked polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) based elastomer to fabricate soft striped superhydrophobic surfaces of varying rigidity. The soft structured substrates are fabricated using a three step soft molding process 27 . In the first step, we fabricate a SU8 replica (primary) of the desired striped substrate using photo-lithography (see step 1 in Sec.…”