Superhydrophobic, Superslippery, Nanopatterned Metallic and Polymeric Surfaces

本研究的目标是开发一种快速生产技术，使用激光飞秒烧蚀纳米图案化各种金属和聚合物基板和金属和聚合物表面的形态优化，以确定最佳的表面形态，结果最大的超疏水性和超疏油性。我们以前在制造超疏水基底领域的发展在扫描相对大的区域时是缓慢和低效的，并且需要这些来证明潜在的应用，即构建具有超脂质界面的流动通道、生物医学装置和工具如手术工具。我们实验室开发的方法是一种表面粗糙化的新方法，本质上是用短脉冲激光对金属和坚韧聚合物进行烧蚀（Kietzig等人，Langmuir，2009）。将表面暴露于CO2使得表面超疏水，这是一个了不起的发现。主要目标是通过激光分裂使这种制造技术更快，以便我们可以生产相对大面积的基板。这样的界面是自清洁的，并且在医疗设备和工具中非常有用，而超疏水聚合物与人体组织是生物相容的，因此目标应用将在生物医学工程领域，例如手术工具、医疗植入物和血管置换。 另一个同样重要的应用是聚合物流变学和加工，其中使用超疏水表面构建模具预计将使聚合物操作在生产率和能耗方面都非常有效。如已知的，聚合物工艺表现出许多不稳定性，这些不稳定性将生产速率限制在低速率。这种纳米图案化的界面将显著改变适用于其流动的边界条件（超滑），从而显著降低压降。然而，超疏水性和滑移之间的关系是未知的。此外，根据聚合物和其他流体的分子特性，应优化使滑动最大化并因此使流动阻力最小化的特性长度尺度，因为这种相互关系是未知的。

The goals of this research proposal are the development of a fast production technique using laser femtosecond ablation for nanopatterning various metallic and polymeric substrates and the optimization of the morphology of metallic and polymeric surfaces in order to identify the optimum surface morphology that results maximum superhydrophobicity and superoleophobicity. Our previous developments in the area of manufacturing superhydrophobic substrates were slow and inefficient in scanning relatively large areas, and these are needed to demonstrate potential applications i.e. construction of flow channels with superslippery interfaces, biomedical devices and tools such as surgical tools. The method developed in our lab is a new method for surface roughening, essentially is ablation with short-pulse laser on metals and tough polymers (Kietzig et al., Langmuir, 2009). Exposure of the surface to CO2 renders the surface superhydrophobic, a remarkable discovery. The main objective to make this manufacturing technique faster by laser splitting so that we can produce substrates of relatively large areas. Such interfaces are self-cleaning and extremely useful in medical devices and tools whereas superhydrophobic polymers are biocompatible with human tissues and therefore the targeted application will be in the biomedical engineering field such as surgical tools, medical implants, and blood vessel replacement. Another application equally important and part of this proposal is polymer rheology and processing where the use of superhydrophobic surfaces for the construction of dies are expected to render polymer operations extremely efficient in both the rate of production and energy consumption. As known, polymer processes exhibit many instabilities that limit the rate of production to low rates. Such nanopatterned interfaces would change dramatically the boundary conditions applicable to their flow (super-slippery) dramatically reducing the pressure drop. However, the relationship between superhydrophobicity and slip is not known. Moreover, depending on the molecular characteristics of polymeric and other fluids, the characteristics length scales that maximize slip and thus minimise resistance to flow should be optimized as such interrelationships are not known.