Hydrophobic Surface Fabrication by Laser Micropatterning

Hydrophobility has attracted much of the research attention recently because superhydrophobic surface has self-cleaning effect with potential applications in solar cell and micro-devices. Conventionally superhydrophobic surface was made by self-assembly or other chemical processing methods. In most of these methods, superhydrophobic surface cannot maintain for a long time or cannot be fabricated over a large area. In this paper, laser micropatterning methods were investigated to overcome these problems. One method is direct laser writing by focusing high power femtosecond laser or UV laser on material surface to generate micro-size structure. Stainless steel was used to obtain hydrophobic properties. The hydrophobic properties of laser fabricated micropatterns were also studied.