Diamond-Like Carbon Coatings with Special Wettability for Automotive Applications

Abstract

Surface modification is an effective way of improving the tribological properties of base materials and is now actively being used in the automotive industry. Surface wettability can affect the overall performance of automotive components, such as windshields and mirrors, and controlling the surface hydrophobicity or hydrophilicity has been a major focus of research work in this industry. Diamond-like carbon (DLC), which is an amorphous carbon compound with outstanding mechanical and tribological properties, has gained considerable attention as a superior functional coating material and has been successfully applied to a range of mechanical automotive components, leading to better performance and durability. Recently, DLC-based materials with special wettability have been successfully used for the development of superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic surfaces, and a variety of industrial as well as biomedical applications have been proposed. Undoubtedly, being able to control the surface wettability using such DLC-based materials with tunable wettability would expand the original capabilities of the materials used in the automotive industry today. In this chapter, after giving a brief introduction to the fundamentals of surface wettability in relation to DLC coatings, we review recent studies on the control of surface wettability using DLC-based materials and then discuss future outlook.