Although strategies for smart control of droplets by utilizing slippery surfaces that are typically made by infusing lubricants into porous surfaces are booming, no surface can smartly control the start or stop of droplet sliding without external environmental stimuli. A strategy for how surfaces alone, if constituted by lubricant-infused porous hydrophobic sticky surfaces (LIPHSS) with a specific interface self-adjusting system, can achieve the target of smart control of a drop's slide is presented here. The continuous self-adjustment of the interface formed by droplets and LIPHSS leads to the occurrence of droplet sinking behavior. The droplet's sinking reduces its sliding angle (SA) and thus can trigger the sliding of the droplet deposited on LIPHSS with a tilt base angle between the SA after sinking and the SA before sinking. Furthermore, regulating lubricant layer thickness and tilt base angle is an important way to achieve smart control of the time required to initiate the sliding of the droplet. The uniqueness of the study is focused on the clever extension of the sinking behavior of droplets on LIPHSS to achieve a programmable time delay switch to smart control the sliding of droplets.
Keywords: droplet control; hydrophobic sticky surfaces; lubricant-infused surfaces; self-adjusting; time delay switch.