Preparation of an amphiphobic and electrically conductive coating with mushroom structure on flexible polymer substrate

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Amphiphobic surfaces are attracting increasing attention because of their extensive applications in self-cleaning surface, water/oil separation, anti-corrosion coating, etc. Nevertheless, the development of amphiphobic surfaces is notoriously difficult, usually requiring both surface microstructure construction and surface energy modification. In order to avoid surface energy modification with expensive and harmful fluorine-containing compounds, a mushroom structure array was formed by sputtering using a target material of silver (Ag) in this study. Without any chemical modification, the developed mushroom structure presented the desired surface amphiphobicity, highly repellent to various solutions with different surface tensions. In particular, a flexible polymer substrate was applied considering the potential popularization of deformable electronic devices in the near future. It was simple to achieve the desired deformable electrode materials via the deposition of Ag film on the flexible polymer substrate. The coating presented good mechanical robustness against the repeated fatigue test, with a minimal change in the electrical resistance after 10000 bending cycles. The superior performances in surface wettability and mechanical test promised the developed materials to be extensively applied as deformable electrode materials with waterproof and anti-fingerprint surfaces in practice.