Fully superhydrophobic porous medium with super durability

Abstract

BackgroundSuperhydrophobicity being a widely-used characteristic in functional materials that has attracted much interests in academic and industrial applications, such as self-cleaning, anti-corrosion, anti-drag, and anti-icing. Until now, the durability of superhydrophobicity is still a big challenge to limit its extensive applications. Method: Here, we develop a fully superhydrophobic strategy with super durability in a porous medium. The porous medium is achieved as a fully superhydrophobic bulk by treating with the 1 H,1 H,2 H,2 H-PerfluorodecyltriMethoxysilane (FAS-17) at 95 °C. Due to the capillary effect, the FAS-17 liquid readily flows to the whole of the porous medium to modify all surface for superhydrophobicity. Significant Findings: Evaluated via various treatments, including sanding 30 times, repeated exposure at −20 °C to 350 °C 100 times, and immersing in solutions of pH from 3 to 12, the superhydrophobic surface maintains a stabilized contact angle with a slight change. Additionally, this strategy would be a general method which is applicable to many porous media, including Co3O4, CeO2, Fe2O3, MnO2, CuO, and MgO. This work shows the great potential of the fully superhydrophobic porous medium to provide a simple way to design superhydrophobic materials with super durability and facilitates valid avenues for functional surface designing.