Superhydrophobic laser ablated PTFE substrates

The effect of femtosecond laser irradiation process parameters (fluence, scanning speed and beam overlap) on the wettability of the resulted micro/nano-patterned morphologies on polytetrafluoroethylene is studied in detail. Several distinctly different micro/nano-patterns were fabricated including uniaxial and biaxial patterns. In particular, using biaxial scanning well defined pillared morphology was fabricated. The wettability analysis of the biaxially scanned samples revealed enhanced superhydrophobicity exhibiting high contact angles and low contact angle hysteresis.