Abstract
Amplifying the intrinsic wettability of substrate material by changing the solid/liquid contact area is considered to be the main mechanism for controlling the wettability of rough or structured surfaces. Through theoretical analysis and experimental exploration, we have found that in addition to this wettability structure amplification effect, the surface structure also simultaneously controls surface wettability by regulating the wetting state via changing the threshold Young angles of the Cassie–Baxter and Wenzel wetting regions. This wetting state regulation effect provides us with an alternative strategy to overcome the inherent limitation in surface chemistry by tailoring surface structure. The wetting state regulation effect created by multi-scale hierarchical structures is quite significant and plays is a crucial role in promoting the superhydrophobicity, superhydrophilicity and the transition between these two extreme wetting properties, as well as stabilizing the Cassie–Baxter superhydrophobic state on the fabricated lotus-like hierarchically structured Cu surface and the natural lotus leaf.
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The data and materials that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 52105303 and 52025053), Natural Science Foundation of Jilin Province (No. 20220101209JC), and Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52021003).
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Yue Jiang, Zhihui Zhang, Cuie Wen were involved in conceptualization and methodology; Yue Jiang, Xinyi Li, Zhichao Ma and Nan Lin were involved in data curation, writing-original draft, formal analysis, and visualization; Zhonghao Jiang helped in writing-review and editing; and Luquan Ren contributed to supervision.
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Jiang, Y., Li, X., Ma, Z. et al. Role of Multi-scale Hierarchical Structures in Regulating Wetting State and Wetting Properties of Structured Surfaces. J Bionic Eng (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42235-024-00507-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42235-024-00507-5