Superhydrophobic Surface: Design, Fabrication, and Applications

Superhydrophobic surfaces are often found on plant leaves and insect wings in nature. Water on these surfaces forms small beads with a high contact angle of greater than 150¡ã and drips off rapidly when the surfaces are slightly inclined. This interesting phenomenon has stimulated extensive research to make artificial superhydrophobic surfaces and to employ them for a variety of applications. A key challenge in making superhydrophobic surfaces is to tailor the morphology of the surfaces in nanometer scales, which typically involves synthesis and fabrication of materials at nanometer dimensions. In this dissertation, I will first explain general design principles for fabricating superhydrophobic surfaces, with a specific focus on how to fabricate superhydrophobic surfaces on intrinsically hydrophilic materials. I will then present several fabrication methods developed during my Ph.D. program for making artificial superhydrophobic surfaces following such design principles. Finally, I will discuss initial results of our investigation on two promising applications of superhydrophobic surfaces, namely, for anti-icing and hydrodynamic drag reduction purposes, respectively