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Published on: February 23, 2017
Counterion exchange to achieve reversibly switchable hydrophobicity and oleophobicity on fabrics
Jin Yang1, Zhaozhu Zhang, Xuehu Men
1State Key Laboratory of Solid Lubrication, Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, PR China.
Abstract:
We describe a simple layer-by-layer (LbL) technology and counterion exchange procedure to tune the liquid wettability of commercially available cotton fabrics. A polyelectrolyte multilayer is deposited on the fabric surface by the LbL technology, and counterion exchange is used to control the surface composition and thereby to modulate the solid surface energy. The tunability of the solid surface energy, along with the inherent re-entrant texture of the cotton fabric, results in simultaneously switchable wettability between a nonwetting state and a fully wetted state for water and hexadecane. This switchable hydrophobicity and oleophobicity can be explained within a robustness factor, which is a quantitative criterion for the transition between the two states. The counterion exchange can be confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis.
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