Fabrication of a superhydrophobic surface by a template-assisted chemical deposition method

Abstract

A novel chemical deposition method was developed to fabricate an appealing micro-nanostructure on an iron sheet with the assistance of a candle soot coating that served as the surface template. The process is only three steps. First, a soot coating was deposited on a iron sheet surface by placing the iron sheet over the flame of a burned candle. Secondly, the iron sheet was immersed in a copper dichloride ethanol solution for 0.5 hours to obtain a copper layer with a rough three-level structure consisted of microprotrusions, submicron-scale papillae and nanosheets. Thirdly, the prepared iron sheet was modified with octadecanoic acid. It was indicated that the resulting rough copper surface on the iron sheet had great superhydrophobicity whose water contact and sliding angles reach 156.9° and 4.6°, respectively. Here, a new approach may be developed for design and fabrication of ideal hierarchical surface structures via chemical deposition.