Wettability Transition for Laser Textured Surfaces: A Comprehensive Review

Abstract

ABSTRACT Laser texturing, involving the creation of patterns on material surfaces, is considered an efficient and facile approach to fabricate hierarchical surface structures on various material types. This technique produces (super)hydrophilic surfaces, which could later turn (super)hydrophobic after surface treatment such as airborne organic contamination, low temperature annealing, silanization among others. As a game-changer in the material community, these developed superhydrophobic surfaces are employed for several applications: microfluidics, deicing, anticorrosion, anti-biofouling, self-healing amongst others. In this review, a comprehensive and critical assessment of laser-textured superhydrophobic surfaces on various substrate materials was done. Various laser-texturing techniques employed to fabricate micro/nanoscale roughness structures on different materials and recent findings from research works on different laser-texturing techniques are discussed. Trending applications of these laser-textured surfaces within the last six years and their proposed future usages are also extensively discussed. Based on the available literature, femtosecond and picosecond laser-texturing technologies are the most versatile and widely used. The two techniques are facile, reliable, and cost-effective means of mass-producing superhydrophobic surfaces on substrates of different complex shapes, with minimum heat loads and reduced heat-affected zones. Shape memory polymers are suitable candidates for obtaining superhydrophobic surfaces with self-healing functionality.