Superhydrophobic and Superoleophobic Polymeric Surfaces

• Published in: Functional Polymer Coatings pp. 71 - 95
• Main Authors: Baghdachi, Jamil, Wu, Limin
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United States Wiley 2015; John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated; John Wiley & Sons, Inc
• Subjects: anti‐bioadhesion; electrochemical polymerization; electrospinning; LbL deposition; oil‐water separation; plasma treatment; superhydrophobic polymer multilayers; superoleophobic polymeric surface; surface wettability; water contact angle
• ISBN: 1118510704; 9781118510704
• DOI: 10.1002/9781118883051.ch2

An ideal super‐repellent surface would be both superhydrophobic and superoleophobic. This chapter provides an overview on various approaches to obtain super‐repellent polymeric surfaces and their potential applications in self‐cleaning, anti‐bioadhesion, anti‐icing, oil/water separation, and so on. Contact angle (CA) values are conventionally used to describe the surface wettability of a solid. When the probe liquid is water, a solid surface can be categorized as hydrophilic when the water contact angle (WCA) is less than 90° or as hydrophobic when WCA is >90°. Various approaches are described in the chapter to obtain super‐repellent surface. Some of the approaches include template‐replicating method, LbL deposition, plasma treatment, electrospinning, and electrochemical polymerization. Polymer based super‐repellent surfaces may hold great promise for future practical applications due to their intrinsic advantages including (large‐scale) processability, flexibility, variation in material properties from molecular design, and low cost.