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Selective surface tension induced patterning on flexible textiles via click chemistry
Ben Wang1, Yabin Zhang1, Li Zhang2
1Division of Biomedical Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin NT, Hong Kong SAR, China. lizhang@mae.cuhk.edu.hk and Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin NT, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Nanoscale
|March 25, 2017
Summary
Researchers developed programmable textiles that can exhibit three wetting modes: wetting, selective wetting, and nonwetting. This breakthrough allows textiles to act as novel encoded information carriers for flexible devices.
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Surface Chemistry
- Textile Engineering
Background:
- Solid surfaces typically display two wetting modes (wetting and nonwetting) based on liquid properties.
- Controlling surface wettability is crucial for advanced material applications.
Purpose of the Study:
- To program textiles for three distinct wetting modes.
- To explore the potential of these textiles as encoded information carriers.
Main Methods:
- Utilized wet chemical etching and UV-induced thiol-ene click chemistry.
- Grafted low-surface-tension and high-surface-tension thiols onto textile surfaces.
- Investigated liquid interactions based on surface tension.
Main Results:
- Textiles demonstrated wetting with low-surface-tension liquids (e.g., decane, ethanol).
- Textiles showed nonwetting with high-surface-tension liquids (e.g., water, glycerol).
- Achieved selective wetting within a specific surface tension range (28.1–44.8 mN m⁻¹).
Conclusions:
- The developed textiles exhibit tunable three-mode wettability.
- These patterned textiles possess excellent mechanical and chemical stability.
- The materials show high potential as encoded information carriers for flexible electronic devices.
