Superhydrophobic fluorine-free hierarchical coatings produced by vacuum based method

•Fluorine-free superhydrophobic coatings were prepared.•The deposition process combines gas aggregation sources with PE-CVD.•The superhydrophobicity was allowed by hierarchical character of the coatings.•The deposition process is fully vacuum based and substrate independent.

In this study it is presented fully vacuum-based, substrate independent method for fabrication of fluorine-free superhydrophobic surfaces based on combination of gas aggregation sources of nanoparticles and plasma polymerization. This method involves deposition of films of nanoparticles that are subsequently overcoated by plasma polymerized n-hexane. Two different kinds of nanoparticles that differ significantly in their sizes were used: small Cu nanoparticles (mean diameter 18 nm) and big plasma polymerized C:H nanoparticles (diameter 110 nm). It is demonstrated that superhydrophobic and slippery character may be achieved when surfaces with dual-scale roughness were prepared combining bigger C:H nanoparticles with smaller Cu nanoparticles.