Toward superhydrophobic and durable coatings: effect of needle vs crater surface architecture

Practical application of sol-gel derived superhydrophobic films is limited by the fragility of "needlelike" surface roughness. An efficient one step procedure is developed to prepare robust thin films with "craterlike" surface roughness from a methyltrimethoxysilane matrix and polymer sphere templates. The films could be readily spray coated to produce roughened surface textures, which are governed by template concentration and geometry. The effect of this on the wettability and robustness of thin films was examined in detail, revealing a rapid trade-off between the two characteristics due to variations in coating porosity.