Fabrication of Superhydrophobic Surfaces on Copper Substrates via Brush Plating Technique

摘要

Superhydrophobic surfaces on metal substrates are often prepared via roughing the surfaces and lowering their surface energy. Composite brush plating technique is developed to prepare superhydrophobic n-SiO_2/Ni brush plating composite coating on copper surfaces. Under the better process parameters, the water contact angle of the obtained superhydrophobic surface is approximately 160°, and the water sliding angle is less than 10°. The influences of plating voltage and plating time on the coating surface structure and hydrophobicity were discussed. The surface morphology and chemical composition were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS).The results show that the prepared surfaces have the appearance of the uniform micron papilla-like structures, which are composed of submicron globular Ni particles covered with n-SiO_2 nano-scale villiform structures. These hierarchical micro/nano structures are similar to the lotus leaf and play an important role in gaining superhydrophobicity. It is expected that this sample technique will be widely used for large-scale production of superhydrophobic engineering materials.