WETTING BEHAVIOR OF SUPERHYDROPHOBIC FABRICS TREATED WITH CARBON NANOTUBES

摘要

The self-cleaning of lotus leaves in particular is becoming an interesting topic because of the observed wetting properties of the material surfaces. The water contact angle (CA) of a lotus leaf is 161±2.7° with CA hysteresis of 2°. The structure of a lotus leaf consists of a binary- scale roughness: one around 10 μm (rough structure) and the other around 100 nm (fine structure). The superhydrophobic property is believed to be governed by both the chemical composition of the surface material and the cooperative effect of nanostructures within the micrometer-scale areas (the so-called hierarchical structure). The surface structure has two levels of roughness that enable the trapping of air under water droplets, thereby contributing to the rolling water droplet effect that is characteristic of a well-designed superhydrophobic surface.