Two-photon excitation provides a means of activating chemical or physical processes with high spatial resolution in three dimensions and has made possible the development of three-dimensional fluorescence imaging, optical data storage, and lithographic microfabrication. These applications take advantage of the fact that the two-photon absorption probability depends quadratically on intensity, so under tight-focusing conditions, the absorption is confined at the focus to a volume of order λ3 (where λ is the laser wavelength). Any subsequent process, such as fluorescence or a photoinduced chemical reaction, is also localized in this small volume. Although three-dimensional data storage and microfabrication have been illustrated using two-photon-initiated polymerization of resins incorporating conventional ultraviolet-absorbing initiators, such photopolymer systems exhibit low photosensitivity as the initiators have small two-photon absorption cross-sections (δ). Consequently, this approach requires high laser power, and its widespread use remains impractical. Here we report on a class of π;-conjugated compounds that exhibit large δ (as high as 1, 250 × 10−50 cm4 s per photon) and enhanced two-photon sensitivity relative to ultraviolet initiators. Two-photon excitable resins based on these new initiators have been developed and used to demonstrate a scheme for three-dimensional data storage which permits fluorescent and refractive read-out, and the fabrication of three-dimensional micro-optical and micromechanical structures, including photonic-bandgap-type structures.

Two-photon polymerization initiators for three-dimensional optical data storage and microfabrication

Driven by functionality and purity demand for applications of inorganic nanoparticle colloids in optics, biology, and energy, their surface chemistry has become a topic of intensive research interest. Consequently, ligand-free colloids are ideal reference materials for evaluating the effects of surface adsorbates from the initial state for application-oriented nanointegration purposes. After two decades of development, laser synthesis and processing of colloids (LSPC) has emerged as a convenient and scalable technique for the synthesis of ligand-free nanomaterials in sealed environments. In addition to the high-purity surface of LSPC-generated nanoparticles, other strengths of LSPC include its high throughput, convenience for preparing alloys or series of doped nanomaterials, and its continuous operation mode, suitable for downstream processing. Unscreened surface charge of LSPC-synthesized colloids is the key to achieving colloidal stability and high affinity to biomolecules as well as support materials,...

Laser Synthesis and Processing of Colloids: Fundamentals and Applications

Oil/water separation is a field of high significance as it has direct practical implications for resolving the problem of industrial oily wastewater and other oil/water pollution. Therefore, the development of functional materials for efficient treatment of oil-polluted water is imperative. In this feature article, we have reviewed the recent progress of oil/water separation technologies based on filtration and absorption methods using various materials that possess surface superwetting properties. In each section, we present in detail representative work and describe the concepts, employed materials, fabrication methods, and the effects of their wetting/dewetting behaviors on oil/water separation. Finally, the challenges and future research directions of this promising research field are briefly discussed.

Oil/water separation techniques: a review of recent progresses and future directions

Fogging occurs when moisture condensation takes the form of accumulated droplets with diameters larger than 190 nm or half of the shortest wavelength (380 nm) of visible light. This problem may be effectively addressed by changing the affinity of a material’s surface for water, which can be accomplished via two approaches: i) the superhydrophilic approach, with a water contact angle (CA) less than 5°, and ii) the superhydrophobic approach, with a water CA greater than 150°, and extremely low CA hysteresis. To date, all techniques reported belong to the former category, as they are intended for applications in optical transparent coatings. A well-known example is the use of photocatalytic TiO2 nanoparticle coatings that become superhydrophilic under UV irradiation. Very recently, a capillary effect was skillfully adopted to achieve superhydrophilic properties by constructing 3D nanoporous structures from layer-by-layer assembled nanoparticles. The key to these two “wet”-style antifogging strategies is for micrometer-sized fog drops to rapidly spread into a uniform thin film, which can prevent light scattering and reflection from nucleated droplets. Optical transparency is not an intrinsic property of antifogging coatings even though recently developed antifogging coatings are almost transparent, and the transparency could be achieved by further tuning the nanoparticle size and film thickness. To our knowledge, the antifogging coatings may also be applied to many fields that do not require optical transparency, including, for example, paints for inhibiting swelling and peeling issues and metal surfaces for preventing corrosion. These types of issues, which are caused by adsorption of moisture, are hard to solve by the superhydrophilic approach because of its inherently “wet” nature. Thus, a “dry”-style antifogging strategy, which consists of a novel superhydrophobic technique that can prevent moisture or microscale fog drops from nucleating on a surface, is desired. Recent bionic researches have revealed that the self-cleaning ability of lotus leaves and the striking ability of a water-strider’s legs to walk on water can be attributed to the ideal superhydrophobicity of their surfaces, induced by special microand nanostructures. To date, the biomimetic fabrication of superhydrophobic microand/or nanostructures has attracted considerable interest, and these types of materials can be used for such applications as self-cleaning coatings and stain-resistant textiles. Although a superhydrophobic technique inspired by lotus leaves is expected to be able to solve such fogging problems because the water droplets can not remain on the surface, there are no reports of such antifogging coatings. Very recently, researchers from General Motors have reported that the surfaces of lotus leaves become wet with moisture because the size of the fog drops are at the microscale—so small that they can be easily trapped in the interspaces among micropapillae. Thus, lotuslike surface microstructures are unsuitable for superhydrophobic antifogging coatings, and a new inspiration from nature is desired for solving this problem. In this communication, we report a novel, biological, superhydrophobic antifogging strategy. It was found that the compound eyes of the mosquito C. pipiens possess ideal superhydrophobic properties that provide an effective protective mechanism for maintaining clear vision in a humid habitat. Our research indicates that this unique property is attributed to the smart design of elaborate microand nanostructures: hexagonally non-close-packed (ncp) nipples at the nanoscale prevent microscale fog drops from condensing on the ommatidia surface, and hexagonally close-packed (hcp) ommatidia at the microscale could efficiently prevent fog drops from being trapped in the voids between the ommatidia. We also fabricated artificial compound eyes by using soft lithography and investigated the effects of microand nanostructures on the surface hydrophobicity. These findings could be used to develop novel superhydrophobic antifogging coatings in the near future. It is known that mosquitoes possess excellent vision, which they exploit to locate various resources such as mates, hosts, and resting sites in a watery and dim habitat. To better understand such remarkable abilities, we first investigated the interaction between moisture and the eye surface. An ultrasonic humidifier was used to regulate the relative humidity of the atmosphere and mimic a mist composed of numerous tiny water droplets with diameters less than 10 lm. As the fog was C O M M U N IC A IO N

The dry-style antifogging properties of mosquito compound eyes and artificial analogues prepared by soft lithography: a superhydrophobic state with high adhesive force

This review gives an overview of recent advances in the potential applications of superhydrophobic materials. Such properties are characterized by extremely high water contact angles and various adhesion properties. The conception of superhydrophobic materials has been possible by studying and mimicking natural surfaces. Now, various applications have emerged such as anti-icing, anti-corrosion and anti-bacterial coatings, microfluidic devices, textiles, oil–water separation, water desalination/purification, optical devices, sensors, batteries and catalysts. At least two parameters were found to be very important for many applications: the presence of air on superhydrophobic materials with self-cleaning properties (Cassie–Baxter state) and the robustness of the superhydrophobic properties (stability of the Cassie–Baxter state). This review will allow researchers to envisage new ideas and industrialists to advance in the commercialization of these materials.

Recent advances in the potential applications of bioinspired superhydrophobic materials

Tunable adhesive superhydrophobic materials have attracted increasing research interest due to their applications in microdroplet manipulation, biological detection and microfluidic system. However, most of the artificial materials easily lose superhydrophobicity in harsh environments. The durability of superhydrophobic materials is very important to extend their lifetime in practical applications. In this paper, bioinspired durable superhydrophobicity with tunable adhesion on polytetrafluoroethylene surfaces is realized via a one-step femtosecond laser irradiation. On the laser-induced superhydrophobic surfaces, the sliding angle can be tuned from 1° to 90° (water droplet is pinned on the surface at any titled angles). The tunable water adhesion results from different contact states which change from the lotus state to the transition state and then to the composite state with increasing average distance of irradiation points. Water droplet quick localization and no-loss droplet transportation were achieved through designing surface adhesion. In addition, the resultant surfaces are so stable that they can maintain superhydrophobicity even after storing in harsh environments, without dramatical superhydrophobicity decay for a long time.

Durability of the tunable adhesive superhydrophobic PTFE surfaces for harsh environment applications

This paper presents a facile method for the fabrication of on-chip three-dimensional (3D) microcoils inside fused silica. The main fabrication process involves two steps: (1) creating 3D helical microchannels inside fused silica using an improved femtosecond laser irradiation assisted by chemical etching (FLICE) technology and (2) conductive treatment by injecting metal gallium into the helical microchannels. The high aspect ratio 3D helical microcoil was prepared inside fused silica with a diameter of 100 μm, a length of 880 μm and a pitch of coil of 44 μm. The method is flexible to fabricate microcoils inside fused silica with arbitrary geometry configurations and different coil properties. This type of microcoils can be easily integrated into ‘lab on a chip’ (LOC) platform inside fused silica substrate. (Some figures may appear in colour only in the online journal)

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0960-1317/22/10/105017/pdf

Facile fabrication of true three-dimensional microcoils inside fused silica by a femtosecond laser

Microlens arrays (MLAs), as the important optical devices, are easily polluted by the water droplets or power-like-contaminates in the air. Endowing the artificial MLAs with anti-water and self-cleaning abilities remains great challenge. In this paper, the authors report a novel method for fabricating superhydrophobic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) MLAs by the combination of femtosecond laser wet etching and femtosecond laser direct writing methods. The resultant surface is composed of a convex MLA and the surrounding rough micro/nanoscale hierarchical structures. Water droplet on the surface of the as-prepared MLA shows a contact angle of 162 and can easily roll away when the substrate is slightly tilted 0.5 . In addition to their excellent imaging performance, such ultralow adhesive and ultrahigh superhydrophobicity also endows the as-prepared MLA with excellent anti-water ability as well as the self-cleaning function relative to the normal MLA. The authors believe that the anti-water and self-cleaning MLAs will potentially have many important applications in solar cells, medical endoscopes, and other optical systems that are often used in the humid environment or outdoors.

Integration of Great Water Repellence and Imaging Performance on a Superhydrophobic PDMS Microlens Array by Femtosecond Laser Microfabrication

This paper presents a simple and effective method to fabricate underwater superoleophobic glass surfaces with extremely controllable oil-adhesion through the femtosecond laser microfabrication. The laser-irradiated surfaces show micro-/nanoscale hierarchical structures and similar underwater superoleophobicity. By adjusting the average distance of laser pulse focus, the oil-adhesion of the as-prepared underwater superoleophobic surfaces can be controlled from ultralow to ultrahigh. This controllability of oil-adhesion is ascribed to the different wetting states for the oil droplet on the surface that results from the change of the morphology and microstructure after femtosecond laser irradiation. The as-prepared superoleophobic surfaces with ultralow oil-adhesion have the anti-oil contamination ability in water. The ultrahigh oil-adhesive superoleophobic surfaces can be used as a “mechanical hand” to transfer small oil droplets without any volume loss in water environment, endowing the controllable oil-adhesive surfaces with important applications in the fusion of oil/organic microdroplets.

Femtosecond laser controlling underwater oil-adhesion of glass surface

True three-dimensional (3D) micromixers in fused silica are highly desirable for efficient and compact mixing in microfluidic applications. However, realization of such devices remains technically challenging. Here, we report high-quality fabrication of 3D helical microchannels in fused silica by taking the full advantage of an improved femtosecond laser irradiation followed by chemical etching process, and a glass-PDMS interface structure is introduced for assembling 3D helical micromixer. Highly efficient mixing is achieved in the helical micromixer at low Reynolds numbers, whose excellent mixing performance is approved by the experimental evaluation and computational fluid dynamics simulation.

Hao Bian

Papers

Durability of the tunable adhesive superhydrophobic PTFE surfaces for harsh environment applications

Facile fabrication of true three-dimensional microcoils inside fused silica by a femtosecond laser

Integration of Great Water Repellence and Imaging Performance on a Superhydrophobic PDMS Microlens Array by Femtosecond Laser Microfabrication

Femtosecond laser controlling underwater oil-adhesion of glass surface

A high-efficiency three-dimensional helical micromixer in fused silica