For manufacturing superhydrophobic silicon rubber surface(SSRS) efficiently and conveniently
we used the high voltage(HV) electrospray to prepare SSRS in laboratory and discussed some key issues in the process. The solution for electrospray is a composite system
which is comprised of AB component high-temperature vulcanization(HTV) liquid silicon rubber(LSR)
petroleum ether
N
N-dimethylformamide(DMF)
Si O2 nano-particles
and heptadecafluorodecyl trimethoxysilane(FAS-17). According to the preparing process
several results were obtained. Conclusions can be drawn as follows: petroleum ether is effective to dilute HTV;DMF helps elevate the polarity of electrospray solution
which makes the solutio
n easy to spray and reduces the scale length of spray particles;Si O2 nano-particles contribute to construct hierarchically micro-nano structures in the substrate;By adding FAS-17 into the solution
fluorine group will be introduced to HTV surfaces
which lowers the surface free energy and decreases the scale length of the surface morphology to 100 nm
1
μm. After a number of tests
we have proposed an optimized composition of the electrospray solution: the percentages of petroleum ether
HTV
DMF
Si O2
and FAS-17 are about 41%
20%
30%
4%
and 5%
respectively. With this composition
we can obtain SSRS with static contact angel of 163.4° and sliding angle of 4.3°.