Life Span of Slippery Lubricant Infused Surfaces

Since their discovery a decade ago, slippery liquid infused porous surfaces (SLIPSs) or lubricant infused surfaces (LISs) have been demonstrated time and again to have immense potential for a plethora of applications. Of these, one of the most promising is enhancing the energy efficiency of both thermoelectric and organic Rankine cycle power generation via enhanced vapor condensation. However, utilization of SLIPSs in the energy sector remains limited due to the poor understanding of their life span. Here, we use controlled conditions to conduct multimonth steam and ethanol condensation tests on ultrascalable nanostructured copper oxide structured surfaces impregnated with mineral and fluorinated lubricants having differing viscosities (9.7 mPa·s < μ < 5216 mPa·s) and chemical structures. Our study demonstrates that SLIPSs lose their hydrophobicity during steam condensation after 1 month due to condensate cloaking. However, these same SLIPSs maintain nonwetting after 5 months of ethanol condensation due to the absence of cloaking. Surfaces impregnated with higher viscosity oil (5216 mPa·s) increase the life span to more than 8 months of continuous ethanol condensation. Vapor shear tests revealed that SLIPSs do not undergo oil depletion during exposure to 10 m/s gas flows, critical to condenser implementation where single-phase superheated vapor impingement is prevalent. Furthermore, higher viscosity SLIPSs are shown to maintain good stability after exposure to 200 °C air. A subset of the durable SLIPSs did not show change in slipperiness after submerging in stagnant water and ethanol for up to 2 weeks, critical to condenser implementation where single-phase condensate immersion is prevalent. Our work not only demonstrates design methods and longevity statistics for slippery nanoengineered surfaces undergoing long-term dropwise condensation of steam and ethanol but also develops the fundamental design guidelines for creating durable slippery liquid infused surfaces.