New thermal-sensitive superhydrophobic material

Roughness of superhydrophobic surfaces plays a crucial role in the wetting properties of these surfaces. We propose to modify the roughness of a surface by applying external stimuli to change its wetting properties. In this spirit, we study superhydrophobic surfaces consisting of arrays of micro-pillars made with a liquid crystal elastomer. These liquid crystals change their orientation when heated, so that the height of the pillars decreases when the surface temperature increases; and this is perfectly reversible. We study the impact of such a thermal-actuation on the static and dynamic wetting properties of such surfaces and show superhydrophobicity of this new material can indeed be tuned using temperature stimuli.