Journal ArticleDOI
Effects of micro- and nano-structures on the self-cleaning behaviour of lotus leaves
TLDR
In this article, the influence of micro-and nano-scale structures on the wetting behavior of lotus leaves was investigated and the findings may help design self-cleaning surfaces and improve our understanding of wetting mechanisms.Abstract:
When rain falls on lotus leaves water beads up with a high contact angle. The water drops promptly roll off the leaves, collecting dirt along the way. This self-cleaning ability or lotus effect has, in recent years, stimulated much research effort worldwide for a variety of applications ranging from self-cleaning window glasses, paints, and fabrics to low friction surfaces. What are the mechanisms giving rise to the lotus effect? Although chemical composition and surface structure are believed important, a systematic experimental investigation of their effects is still lacking. By altering the surface structure of the leaves while keeping their chemical composition approximately the same, we report in this study the influence of micro- and nano-scale structures on the wetting behaviour of lotus leaves. The findings of this work may help design self-cleaning surfaces and improve our understanding of wetting mechanisms.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Progess in superhydrophobic surface development.
TL;DR: The origins of water-repellent surfaces are discussed, examining how size and shape of surface features are used to control surface characteristics, in particular how techniques have progressed to form multi-scaled roughness to mimic the lotus leaf effect.
Journal ArticleDOI
Recent developments in superhydrophobic surfaces and their relevance to marine fouling: a review
Jan Genzer,Kirill Efimenko +1 more
TL;DR: The formation of responsive/“smart” surfaces, which adjust their physico-chemical properties to variations in some outside physical stimulus, including light, temperature, electric field, or solvent, is also described.
Journal ArticleDOI
Patterned Superhydrophobic Metallic Surfaces
TL;DR: This work shows that after creating certain dual scale roughness structures by femtosecond laser irradiation different metal alloys initially show superhydrophilic behavior with complete wetting of the structured surface, however, over time, these surfaces become nearly super Hydrophobic with contact angles in the vicinity of 150 degrees and superHydrophobicwith contact angles above 150 degrees.
Journal ArticleDOI
Diversity of structure, morphology and wetting of plant surfaces
TL;DR: This article presents a guide for the description of cellular and sub-cellular plant surface structures, which include hairs, wax crystals and surface folding, which are one of the key innovations in the more than 400 million years of evolution of land plants.
Journal ArticleDOI
Superhydrophobicity in perfection: the outstanding properties of the lotus leaf
TL;DR: The lotus plant has successfully developed an excellent protection for this delicate epistomatic surface of its leaves, particularly of the upper side of the lotus leaf, which can be deduced from the fact that the stomata are located in the upper epidermis.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Purity of the sacred lotus, or escape from contamination in biological surfaces
TL;DR: It is shown here for the first time that the interdependence between surface roughness, reduced particle adhesion and water repellency is the keystone in the self-cleaning mechanism of many biological surfaces.
Journal ArticleDOI
Super-hydrophobic surfaces: From natural to artificial
Lin Feng,Shuhong Li,Yingshun Li,Huanjun Li,Lingjuan Zhang,Jin Zhai,Yanlin Song,Biqian Liu,Lei Jiang,Daoben Zhu +9 more
TL;DR: In this article, a super-hydrophobic surface with both a large contact angle (CA) and a small sliding angle (α) has been constructed from carbon nanotubes.
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Characterization and Distribution of Water-repellent, Self-cleaning Plant Surfaces
TL;DR: The importance of roughness and water-repellency, respectively, as the basis of an anti-adhesive, self-cleaning surface, in comparison to other functions of microstructures, is discussed.