Azimi Dijvejin Zahra, Khatir Behrooz, Golovin Kevin
Okanagan Polymer Engineering Research & Applications Laboratory, School of Engineering, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, British Columbia V1V 1V7, Canada.
Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G8, Canada.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2022 Feb 2;14(4):6221-6229. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c22344. Epub 2022 Jan 21.
High foulant adhesion remains a critical issue in a wide range of industries, such as ice accretion on aircraft, biofoulants on ships, wax build-up within pipelines, and scale formation in water remediation. Previous anti-fouling surfaces have only shown promise for reducing the adhesion of a single foulant system; a multi-foulant anti-fouling technology remains elusive. Here, we introduce a mechanical metamaterial-based approach to develop anti-fouling surfaces applicable to a wide range of fouling substances. The suspended kirigami inverted nil-adhesion surfaces, or SKINS, show significantly reduced adhesion of ice, different waxes, dried mud, pressure-sensitive adhesive tape, and a marine hard foulant simulant. SKINS mimic the wrinkling of hard films adhered to soft substrates. Foulant adhesion can be minimized by this wrinkling, which may be controlled by tuning the kirigami motif, sheet material, and foulant dimensions. SKINS reduce adhesion mechanically and were found to be independent of surface energy, enabling their fabrication from commonplace hydrophilic polymers like cellulose acetate. Optimized SKINS exhibited extremely low foulant adhesion, for example, ice adhesion strengths less than 5 kPa (a >250-fold reduction from aluminum substates), and were found to maintain their performance on curved surfaces like transmission cables. The low foulant adhesion persisted over 30 repeated foulant deposition and removal cycles, demonstrating the anti-fouling durability of SKINS. Overall, SKINS offers a previously unexplored route to achieving low foulant adhesion that is highly tunable in both geometry and material selection, is applicable to many different fouling substances, and maintains extremely low foulant adhesion even on complex substrates over large fouled interfaces.
在众多行业中，高污垢附着力仍然是一个关键问题，例如飞机上的积冰、船舶上的生物污垢、管道内的蜡堆积以及水净化中的水垢形成。以往的防污表面仅显示出减少单一污垢系统附着力的前景；一种适用于多种污垢的防污技术仍然难以实现。在此，我们引入一种基于机械超材料的方法来开发适用于多种污垢物质的防污表面。悬浮式剪纸倒置零附着力表面（简称SKINS）对冰、不同种类的蜡、干泥、压敏胶带以及一种海洋硬污垢模拟物的附着力显著降低。SKINS模仿了附着在软质基底上的硬质薄膜的起皱现象。这种起皱现象可将污垢附着力降至最低，通过调整剪纸图案、薄片材料和污垢尺寸可以对其进行控制。SKINS通过机械方式降低附着力，并且发现其与表面能无关，这使得它们能够由醋酸纤维素等常见的亲水性聚合物制成。优化后的SKINS表现出极低的污垢附着力，例如，冰附着力强度小于5 kPa（比铝基底降低了250倍以上），并且发现在诸如输电电缆等曲面上仍能保持其性能。在30次重复的污垢沉积和去除循环中，低污垢附着力一直持续，这证明了SKINS的防污耐久性。总体而言，SKINS提供了一条此前未被探索的途径来实现低污垢附着力，这种方法在几何形状和材料选择方面具有高度可调节性，适用于许多不同的污垢物质，并且即使在大型污垢界面上的复杂基底上也能保持极低的污垢附着力。
