Super-Hydrophobic Engineering Materials

A team headed by LIU Weimin and HAO Jingcheng from the CAS Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics has come up with a simple and inexpensive method to produce super-hydrophobic surfaces on aluminum and its alloy by oxidation and chemical modification. Water or aqueous solutions (pH = 1-14) have contact angles of 168 ± 2° and 161 ± 2° on the treated surfaces of Al and Al alloy, respectively. The super-hydrophobic surfaces are produced by the cooperation of binary structures at micro- and nanometer scales, thus reducing the energies of the surfaces. Such super-hydrophobic properties will greatly extend the applications of aluminum and its alloy as lubricating materials.

Their work has been published in a recent issue of J. Am. Chem. Soc.

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Posted 22nd November