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.