A Lipid-Inspired Highly Adhesive Interface for Durable Superhydrophobicity in Wet Environments and Stable Jumping Droplet Condensation.
ACS Nano
; 16(3): 4251-4262, 2022 03 22.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-35275638
ABSTRACT
Creating thin (<100 nm) hydrophobic coatings that are durable in wet conditions remains challenging. Although the dropwise condensation of steam on thin hydrophobic coatings can enhance condensation heat transfer by 1000%, these coatings easily delaminate. Designing interfaces with high adhesion while maintaining a nanoscale coating thickness is key to overcoming this challenge. In nature, cell membranes face this same challenge where nanometer-thick lipid bilayers achieve high adhesion in wet environments to maintain integrity. Nature ensures this adhesion by forming a lipid interface having two nonpolar surfaces, demonstrating high physicochemical resistance to biofluids attempting to open the interface. Here, developing an artificial lipid-like interface that utilizes fluorine-carbon molecular chains can achieve durable nanometric hydrophobic coatings. The application of our approach to create a superhydrophobic material shows high stability during jumping-droplet-enhanced condensation as quantified from a continual one-year steam condensation experiment. The jumping-droplet condensation enhanced condensation heat transfer coefficient up to 400% on tube samples when compared to filmwise condensation on bare copper. Our bioinspired materials design principle can be followed to develop many durable hydrophobic surfaces using alternate substrate-coating pairs, providing stable hydrophobicity or superhydrophobicity to a plethora of applications.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Steam
/
Adhesives
Language:
En
Journal:
ACS Nano
Year:
2022
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Estados Unidos