Superhydrophobic, Superslippery, Nanopatterned Metallic and Polymeric Surfaces

本研究计划的目标是开发一种使用激光飞秒烧蚀的快速生产技术，用于各种金属和聚合物基板的纳米图案，并优化金属和聚合物表面的形态，以确定最佳的表面形态，从而产生最大的超疏水性和超疏油性。我们之前在制造超疏水基板领域的发展在扫描相对较大的区域时速度缓慢且效率低下，并且需要这些来证明潜在的应用，即具有超光滑界面的流动通道的构建，生物医学设备和手术工具等工具。我们实验室开发的方法是一种表面粗化的新方法，本质上是用短脉冲激光对金属和坚韧聚合物进行烧蚀（Kietzig etal ., Langmuir, 2009）。将其表面暴露在二氧化碳中使其表面具有超疏水性，这是一个了不起的发现。我们的主要目标是通过激光分裂使这种制造技术更快，这样我们就可以生产相对大面积的基板。这种界面是自清洁的，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具有生物相容性，因此目标应用将在生物医学工程领域，如手术工具，医疗植入物和血管替代。

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.