title: Omnidirectional Self-Assembly of Transparent Superoleophobic Nanotextures.
abstract: Engineering surface textures that are highly transparent and repel water, oil, and other low surface energy fluids can transform our interaction with wet environments. Despite extensive progress, current top-down methods are based on directional line-of-sight fabrication mechanisms that are limited by scale and cannot be applied to highly uneven, curved, and enclosed surfaces, while bottom-up techniques often suffer from poor optical transparency. Here, we present an approach that enables the rapid, omnidirectional synthesis of flexible and up to 99.97% transparent superhydrophobic and -oleophobic textures on many variable surface types. These features are obtained by the spontaneous formation of a multi re-entrant morphology during the controlled self-assembly of nanoparticle aerosols. We also develop a mathematical model to explain and control the self-assembly dynamics, providing important insights for the rational engineering of functional materials. We envision that our findings represent a significant advance in imparting superoleophobicity and superamphiphobicity to a so-far inapplicable family of materials and geometries for multifunctional applications.
authors.affiliation: Nanotechnology Research Laboratory, Research School of Engineering, The Australian National University , Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601, Australia.
authors.forename: William S Y
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5389-5018
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.affiliation: Nanotechnology Research Laboratory, Research School of Engineering, The Australian National University , Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601, Australia.
authors.forename: Guanyu
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Nanotechnology Research Laboratory, Research School of Engineering, The Australian National University , Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601, Australia.
authors.forename: Noushin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Nasiri
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong , Hong Kong 999077, China.
authors.forename: Chonglei
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hao
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong , Hong Kong 999077, China.
authors.forename: Zuankai
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-3510-1122
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Nanotechnology Research Laboratory, Research School of Engineering, The Australian National University , Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601, Australia.
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-4964-2111
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tricoli
keywords: omnidirectional scalable self-assembly; re-entrant textures; superoleophobic and superamphiphobic; ultra-transparent and flexible