Bioinspired superhydrophobic surfaces, fabricated through simple and scalable roll-to-roll processing

Sung-Hoon Park; Sangeui Lee; David Moreira; Prabhakar R Bandaru; InTaek Han; Dong-Jin Yun

doi:10.1038/srep15430

Bioinspired superhydrophobic surfaces, fabricated through simple and scalable roll-to-roll processing

Sci Rep. 2015 Oct 22:5:15430. doi: 10.1038/srep15430.

Authors

Sung-Hoon Park¹, Sangeui Lee², David Moreira³, Prabhakar R Bandaru³, InTaek Han², Dong-Jin Yun²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical engineering, Soongsil University, 369 Sangdo-ro, Dongjak-gu, Seoul, 156-743, Korea.
² Material Research Center, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, 446-712, Korea.
³ Department of Mechanical &Aerospace Engineering, University of California,San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0411, USA.

Abstract

A simple, scalable, non-lithographic, technique for fabricating durable superhydrophobic (SH) surfaces, based on the fingering instabilities associated with non-Newtonian flow and shear tearing, has been developed. The high viscosity of the nanotube/elastomer paste has been exploited for the fabrication. The fabricated SH surfaces had the appearance of bristled shark skin and were robust with respect to mechanical forces. While flow instability is regarded as adverse to roll-coating processes for fabricating uniform films, we especially use the effect to create the SH surface. Along with their durability and self-cleaning capabilities, we have demonstrated drag reduction effects of the fabricated films through dynamic flow measurements.