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Published on: February 11, 2020
Tunable wettability and rewritable wettability gradient from superhydrophilicity to superhydrophobicity
Liming Wang1, Bo Peng, Zhaohui Su
1State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, PR China.
Abstract:
A simple method for the fabrication of tunable surfaces with wettability that can be manipulated rapidly and reversibly from superhydrophilicity to superhydrophobicity is reported. A polyelectrolyte multilayer (PEM) was deposited on a rough substrate, and via ion exchange of the counterion in the PEM, the water contact angle of the surface was switched between <5 degrees and 164 degrees. By controlling the ion-exchange kinetics, on the same surface, completely erasable, rewritable gradient wettability from superhydrophilicity to superhydrophobicity was conveniently achieved.

