Self-Adaptive Surface with Tunable Superamphiphobicity Fabricated by Femtosecond Laser Induced Backward Transfer

In recent years, a rapid advance in fabricating smart surfaces with tunable wettability have been witnessed. However, switchable superamphiphobic surface remains a great challenge today. Here, glass surfaces with tunable wetting performance between amphipathicity and amphiphobicity, lotus effect and petal effect, isotropic and anisotropic amphiphobicity are obtained by femtosecond-laser-induced backward transfer (LIBT) method. By printing simple patterns, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is spatial-selectively transferred with composite micro/nano-structures formed on the glass surfaces, ensuring a strong repellence for water and oil. Besides, the surface topography and chemistry can be finely regulated in a single-step process without damage to the glass, which provides the feasibility of controlling the surface wettability. Herein, applications such as high precision mixing reactor, droplet volume screening micro-device, auto-filtering droplet channel are designed and demonstrated. Compared to other methods, the LIBT method featuring rapid, large-area, maskless prototyping is proved to be a promising method for programmable manipulations of functional surfaces with diverse wettability.

Automated summary

This article presents a method for fabricating smart surfaces with tunable wettability using the LIBT method, and demonstrates the applications of these surfaces. The method is proven to be promising for programmable manipulations of functional surfaces with diverse wettability, with features such as rapid, large-area, and maskless prototyping.