Sticky superhydrophobic hard nanofibers from soft matter

Thierry Darmanin (1) , Claudio Mortier (1) , Julian Eastoe (2) , Masanobu Sagisaka (3) , Frédéric Guittard (1)

1 Surfaces & Interfaces
2 School of Chemistry
3 Department of Frontier Materials Chemistry

Here, we show the possibility to change superhydrophobic properties from soft to hard polymer nanofibers by the control of the nature of branched molecules. In fact, we report the synthesis of original monomers derived from 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (ProDOT) and bearing two branched alkyl chains and their electrodeposition by cyclic voltammetry. We point out that hydrocarbon moiety (cheaper, available, non-toxic) can be an alternative to long fluorocarbon chains (expensive, from synthetic pathways, bioaccumulable) to reach anti-wetting properties. Moreover, we show that the change in the size of branched chains can change the surface morphology, from soft to hard nanofibers with an increase in the water adhesion due to a lower intrinsic hydrophobicity. Surprisingly, if these hard nanofibers can by generally obtained from inorganic chemistry, which are more resistance to lateral collapse and coalescence, we demonstrate the possibility to produce them from soft matter, i.e. polymers. In the case of the hard nanofibers, cross-section images reveal that these fibers are vertically aligned to the substrate. Moreover, we show that the height and the diameter of the hard nanofibers, as well as the distance between the fibers can be controlled by the number of deposition scans. Such materials could be used for many biomedical applications.

Domaines: Matériaux

Thierry Darmanin, Claudio Mortier, Julian Eastoe, Masanobu Sagisaka, Frédéric Guittard. Sticky superhydrophobic hard nanofibers from soft matter. RSC Advances, 2014, 4, pp.35708-35716. ⟨10.1039/c4ra05150e⟩. ⟨hal-01053209⟩