Journal article
Flexible Transparent Hierarchical Nanomesh for Rose Petal-Like Droplet Manipulation and Lossless Transfer
WSY Wong, N Nasiri, G Liu, N Rumsey-Hill, VSJ Craig, DR Nisbet, A Tricoli
Advanced Materials Interfaces | Published : 2015
Abstract
Precise manipulation of water is a key step in numerous natural and synthetic processes. Here, a new flexible and transparent hierarchical structure is determined that allows ultra-dexterous manipulation and lossless transfer of water droplets. A 3D nanomesh is fabricated in one step by scalable electrospinning of low-cost polystyrene solutions. Optimal structures are composed of a mesh of dense nanofiber layers vertically separated by isolated mesoporous microbeads. This results in a highly adhesive superhydrophobic wetting that perfectly mimics rose petal-like structures. Structural-functional correlations are obtained over all key process parameters enabling robust tailoring of the wettin..
View full abstractGrants
Awarded by ANU-Discovery Translation Fund
Funding Acknowledgements
The manuscript was written through contributions of all authors. All authors have given approval to the final version of the manuscript. The authors thank Prof. Tim Senden (RSPE, ANU), Dr. Adrian Lowe (RSE, ANU), and Dr. Khu Vu (RSPE, ANU) for their valuable advice and the use of their laboratories. W.W.S.Y. acknowledges the PhD research fellowship from the Australian National University. D.R.N. was supported by an Australian Research Council Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship, and subsequently by a NHMRC Career Development Fellowship. A.T. was supported by a Future Engineering Research Leadership (FERL) fellowship. This work was partially supported by the ANU-Discovery Translation Fund grant (DTF078). Access to the facilities of the Centre for Advanced Microscopy (CAM) with funding through the Australian Microscopy and Microanalysis Research Facility (AMMRF) is gratefully acknowledged.