Biomimetic Fabrication of a Large-Area Inclined Microcone Array with Excellent Anisotropic Wetting Performance

Nature has evolved a variety of anisotropic surfaces over millions of years. Inspired by them, many artificial anisotropic surfaces have been successfully fabricated, showing promising applications (e.g., droplet directional motion, de-icing, and so on). However, it is still a huge challenge to achieve the trade-offs among materials properties, production efficiency, cost, geometric control, and uniformity. In this study, a large-area inclined microcone array (IMA) with hierarchical micro/nano features on a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) substrate was successfully fabricated. The as-prepared IMA surface exhibits anisotropic superhydrophobicity and excellent hydrostatic pressure resistance. Moreover, it has a delayed icing effect and lower adhesion strength, showing promising applications in the fields of delayed icing and de-icing. This study opens up a new way to fabricate large-area anisotropic surfaces on thermoplastic substrates following the concept of "functionalized processing for thermoplastics", offering new possibilities for expanding the application scope of thermoplastics.