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Updated: Jan 25, 2026

Pool-Boiling Heat-Transfer Enhancement on Cylindrical Surfaces with Hybrid Wettable Patterns
Published on: April 10, 2017
Novel reversibly switchable wettability of superhydrophobic-superhydrophilic surfaces induced by charge injection and
Xiangdong Ye1, Junwen Hou1, Dongbao Cai1
1School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Nano Materials and Technology, Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology, Xi'an 710055, China.
Abstract:
Reversibly switching wettability between superhydrophobicity and superhydrophilicity has attracted widespread interest because of its important applications. In this work, we propose a reversible superhydrophobic-superhydrophilic conversion induced by charge injection and heating. Different from the conventional electrowetting phenomenon caused by the accumulation of solid-liquid interfacial charges, we discovered a phenomenon where charge injection and accumulation at the solid surface results in a sharp increase in wettability. The wettability of a sprayed SiO2 nanoparticle coating on a glass slide was shown to change from superhydrophobic to superhydrophilic by charge injection and heating, and the superhydrophobicity was restored by heating, verifying a reversible superhydrophobic-superhydrophilic conversion. The influence of voltage, temperature, and time on the coating wettability and its durability under reversible conversion have been studied.
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