Fabrication of biomimetic superhydrophobic surface with controlled adhesion by electrodeposition

• We have prepared a biomimetic superhydrophobic surface with controlled adhesion.
• The tunable effect is described as transition from the petal effect to lotus effect.
• The mechanism relies on different morphologies and chemical component on surface.
• The superhydrophobic surface has an excellent stability and anticorrosion.

Typical plant leaves, such as lotus leaf, red rose petal, and marigold petal, exhibit different wetting behavior because of their different microstructure scales. Inspired by this fact, we developed a fast, facile, and low-cost one-step electrodeposition process to construct a superhydrophobic surface with controlled adhesion on the copper substrate. The cooperation of hierarchical micro–nanostructures and cerium myristate with low surface energy has an important function in the formation of a superhydrophobic surface. A superhydrophobic surface with controlled adhesion can be easily obtained by changing the reaction time. The tunable effect of adhesion can be described as the transition from the petal effect to the lotus effect due to different morphologies and microstructure scales on the surface. A maximum contact angle of 155.1° was observed on the high-adhesion superhydrophobic surface. Furthermore, a corresponding contact angle of 161.7° and a contact angle hysteresis of 3° appeared on the self-cleaning surface. The dynamic actions of the two-state transformation were described by wetting models and energy equation. In addition, such type of cathodic lanthanide superhydrophobic surface has an excellent stability in the solution of a large pH range and an excellent corrosion resistance in 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution. The results obtained in this study elucidated the effect of wetting states on the superhydrophobic surface with controlled adhesion. Such a technique will develop a new approach to fabricate a controlled superhydrophobic surface with rare earth element on conductive engineering materials.

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