Water repelling Surfaces and Its Applications for Better Human Life and Environment

Superhydrophobic surfaces have caught attention of various researchers, industry and students due to their tremendous applications, cost effective materials and their availability also. Self cleaning, self healing, anti freezing, anti corrosion are some interesting applications of superhydrophobic surfaces. People must have observed car windows clean itself, Mobile screens doesn’t let water drop to stay on their surface, in snow fall region car windows provided with antifreeze surfaces, each one of  these are just few examples. Superhydrophobic surface means water fearing or repelling surfaces. Actually we can divide surfaces in hydrophilic, hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces according to their wettability (capability of surface to wet or de-wet). Hydrophilic refer to surfaces with water affinity as we know hydro means water Philic means affinity. So Hydrophilic surfaces are those which wets completely with water and hydrophobic surfaces means water fearing now the difference between hydrophobic and superhydrophobic lies in contact between surface and water drop. Water drop makes angle with surface that is contact angle and if contact angle is less than 90 degree than surface will be hydrophilic, if contact angle is between 90 and 150 than surface will be hydrophobic and if angle exceeds 150 degree than surface will be superhydrophobic which makes water roll off from its surface. There are many materials and methods have been used to develop these surfaces the major criteria and requirements are not only contact angle but surface composition also matters here as we need microscopically or nanoscopic rough surface. Which means from micro or Nano scale surface must be rough to behave like superhydrophobic surface. Moreover these surfaces do exist in nature also not just artificial have you ever observed lotus leaf or Pigeon Feather it doesn’t let water to wets their surface. Water simply rolls off the surface. Lotus leaf is the inspiration behind artificial superhydrophobic surfaces this is the basic idea about superhydrophobic surfaces in layman language.

 These surfaces have ability to make human life better in a cost effective way moreover without damaging the environment. For example corrosion has immense effect in metal industry. Various metal artifacts, machinery, internal machine pipes, small machine parts get ruined due to corrosion and we know that biggest reason behind corrosion is moisture so if surface doesn’t get to infuse moisture inside than we can protect above mentioned industrial, society or environmental losses due to corrosion in the superhydrophobic materials over such surfaces can help and save the economy. Although there are some challenges or issues in development of these materials faced by researchers and students but with more efforts and more study we can overcome those challenges easily and will be able to provide better life to humans, because such materials can make things waterproof, dust proof, snow proof and many more to come because these surfaces reveal tremendous potential.

Regards
Dr. Konica Sharma
School of Basic & Applied Sciences
Lingaya’s Vidyapeeth, Faridabad