In situ reversible underwater superwetting transition by electrochemical atomic alternation

Qianbin Wang, Bojie Xu, Qing Hao, Dong Wang, Huan Liu () and Lei Jiang
Additional contact information
Qianbin Wang: Beihang University
Bojie Xu: Beihang University
Qing Hao: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Dong Wang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Huan Liu: Beihang University
Lei Jiang: Beihang University

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Materials with in situ reversible wettability have attractive properties but remain a challenge to use since the inverse process of liquid spreading is normally energetically unfavorable. Here, we propose a general electrochemical strategy that enables the in situ reversible superwetting transition between underwater superoleophilicity and superoleophobicity by constructing a binary textured surface. Taking the copper/tin system as an example, the surface energy of the copper electrode can be lowered significantly by electrodeposited tin, and be brought back to the initial high-energy state as a result of dissolving tin by removing the potential. Tin atoms with the water depletion layer inhibit the formation of a hydrogen-bonding network, causing oil droplets to spread over the surface, while copper atoms, with a high affinity for hydroxyl groups, facilitate replacing the oil layer with the aqueous electrolyte. The concept is applicable to other systems, such as copper/lead, copper/antimony, gold/tin, gold/lead and gold/antimony, for both polar and nonpolar oils, representing a potentially useful class of switchable surfaces.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09201-1 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-09201-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09201-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().