Superhydrophobic properties of electrodeposited fluorinated polypyrenes

Abstract

The electropolymerization is a very versatile method to obtain superhydrophobic properties. Here, we report the influence of electrochemical parameters (nature of electrolyte, solvent and deposition method) on the resulting surface morphology and hydrophobicity of electrodeposited fluorinated polypyrenes. Large microspheres with nanoroughness resulting in superhydrophobic properties are obtained. Indeed, even if the resulting polymer chains are very short, the high hydrophobicity of both the fluorinated chains and the pyrene moieties and the π-stacking interactions due to pyrene moieties highly increase the polymer insolubility and the resulting spherical structures. We show that the surface roughness at both a micro and a nanoscale can be controlled with many parameters such as the electrolyte, the solvent, the deposition method, the deposition charge or the number of deposition scans. This first work is extremely important in the use of substituted pyrenes and related monomers for various potential applications in self-cleaning coatings and biosensors, for example.