The preparation of lotus-like super-hydrophobic copper surfaces by electroplating

Abstract

The preparation of super-hydrophobic metal surfaces had to combine rough structures and the surface modifications with low surface energy materials. Although there were different views on it, no experiment was done to prove it yet. In this paper, the structure of natural lotus leaf was observed and the lotus-like surfaces on hydrophilic copper substrates were fabricated via electroplating in large current density. These surfaces were super-hydrophobic without any chemical modification. The hydrophobic mechanism was analyzed. It is believed that this was a meta-stable state in Cassie model. As long as the surface structure was suitable, hydrophobic surface, even super-hydrophobic surface, could be got on hydrophilic substrate.