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Fan Xia, Lin Feng, Shutao Wang, Taolei Sun, Wenlong Song, Wuhui Jiang and Lei Jiang*
Smart interfacial materials that can switch between super-hydrophilicty and super-hydrophobicity have attracted considerable interest due to their great importance in fundamental research and potential for industrial applications. Researchers in Institute of Chemistry, presented a dual-stimuli-responsive surface with tunable wettability, reversibly change between superhydrophilicity and superhydrophobicity, responsive to both temperature and pH. Such surfaces were obtained by simply fabricating copolymer P-(NIPAAm-co-AAc) thin film on both a flat and a rough etching silicon substrate. Reversible switching between super-hydrophilicity and super-hydrophobicity can be realized both in a narrow temperature range of about 10 oC, and in a relatively wide pH range of about 10. In addition, they can also tune the lower critical solubility temperature (LCST) of the co-polymer with the increasing of pH.
Adv. Mater. (2006, Vol. 18, 432 – 436)
Figure (a) When the pH and/or temperature varied, the CAs reversibly changed with them. (b) Hypothetical conformations of hydrogen bonding between the copolymers and water. , |
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