Creating Long-Lived Superhydrophobic Polymer Surfaces Through Mechanically Assembled Monolayers
Jan Genzer,*
Kirill Efimenko
We show that elastomeric surfaces can be tailored using
"mechanically assembled monolayers" (MAMs), structures that are
fabricated by combining self-assembly of surface grafting molecules
with mechanical manipulation of the grafting points in the underlying elastic surface. The versatility of this surface modification method is
demonstrated by fabricating MAMs with semifluorinated (SF) molecules.
These SF-MAMs have superior nonwetting and barrier properties in that
they are "superhydrophobic" and nonpermeable. We also establish
that these material characteristics do not deteriorate even after
prolonged exposure to water, which usually causes surface reconstruction in conventionally prepared SF self-assembled monolayers.
Department of Chemical Engineering, North Carolina State
University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7905, USA.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
jan_genzer{at}ncsu.edu
