Development of one-step and fast manufacturing process for stable superhydrophobic surface using laser beam machining under silicone oil on metals and ceramics

Abstract

Recently, a number of publications using laser fabrication superhydrophobic surfaces have increased. After laser fabrication, the surface exhibits hydrophilicity, so it is necessary to combine with other methods to create a superhydrophobic surface. As a result, laser combined with heat treatment was chosen to fabricate the superhydrophobic surface because this post-process doesn’t need chemical treatment or complex equipment. With this post-process, two kinds of materials as titanium, soda-lime glass were chosen for the fabrication of superhydrophobic surfaces. And the effect of laser power, step size, and pattern design on wettability were investigated. However, taking a long time for heat treatment as for 6 hours for titanium, 48 hours for soda-lime glass is one of the most disadvantages. Therefore, developing a new, simple, and fast process for the fabrication of superhydrophobic surfaces is essential. This new process used laser beam machining under silicone oil for fabricating superhydrophobic on various materials. In detail, with the new process, the study also reported the influence of changing laser parameters such as laser power, scan speed, step size, pattern design (grid, line-patterned), and silicone oil height during the fabrication process. Besides, the stability and robustness of the surface fabrication in the two processes (new process and post-process) to be used for evaluating the quality of the surface were also investigated. The stability of the superhydrophobic surface was tested by an aging test – put in the ambient air for a long time. Meanwhile, the robustness of the superhydrophobic surface was checked by scotch tape test. Finally, some potential applications were reported as water bouncing, water adhesion, self-cleaning, water position, controlling of water moving with different shapes (maze, circle, zigzag).