Coronamicroparticle Arrays with Stable Superamphiphobicity

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Surface Chemistry
• Nanotechnology

Background:

• Springtails naturally utilize reentrant nanostructures for superamphobicity.
• Fabricating dense reentrant nanostructures on curved surfaces is challenging.
• Increasing packing density of nanostructures improves liquid-repelling performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a method for fabricating reentrant nanostructure arrays on curved surfaces.
• To create novel coronamicroparticles with enhanced superamphobicity.
• To explore potential applications of these structures.

Main Methods:

• Transferring a silver nanomesh onto polystyrene (PS) microspheres to create a conformal coating.
• Using thermal evaporation of gold through the silver nanomesh to form gold nanodisk arrays.
• Employing reactive ion etching on gold nanodisk-protected PS microspheres to generate reentrant nanostructures.

Main Results:

• Successfully fabricated coronamicroparticle arrays on PS microspheres, resembling the corona virus.
• Demonstrated that coronamicroparticle morphology can be tuned by PS sphere size and etching time.
• Achieved stable superamphiphobicity in the fabricated coronamicroparticle arrays.

Conclusions:

• The developed method enables efficient fabrication of reentrant nanostructures on curved surfaces.
• Coronamicroparticles exhibit excellent superamphobicity due to increased nanostructure packing density.
• These findings suggest promising applications in self-cleaning, liquid transport, and sensing.