Omniphobic surfaces, which repel all liquids, are used in numerous applications, including desalination and drag reduction. Typically, these surfaces exploit perfluorinated chemicals that are expensive, non-biodegradable, and vulnurable to harsh physical conditions. In response, we have recently demonstrated that bio-inspired doubly reentrant microtextures could render even intrinsically wetting surfaces temporarily omniphobic. Currenlty, we are investigating mechanisms underlying time-dependent wetting transitions along with practical applications.
Detlef Lohse (UTwente), Prat Tiwary (UMaryland), Claus-D. Ohl (NTU), Satoshi Habuchi (KAUST)
Domingues, E. M.; Arunachalam, S.; Mishra, H., Doubly Reentrant Cavities Prevent Catastrophic Wetting Transitions on Intrinsically Wetting Surfaces . Acs Appl Mater Inter 2017, 9 (25), 21532-21538.
Domingues, E.M., Arunachalam, S., Nauruzbayeva, J., & Mishra, H., Biomimetic coating-free surfaces for long-term entrapment of air under wetting liquids. Nature Communications 9, 3606 (2018).
Arunachalam, S., Ahmad, Z., Das, R., & Mishra, H. On the Billion-fold Retardation of Underwater Cassie-to-Wenzel Transitions: Effects of Doubly Reentrant Profile, Surface Make-up, and Hydrostatic Pressure. Advanced Material Interfaces (Accepted August 2020)