Nanostructured materials, methods, and applications
AssigneeUniversity of Rochester
InventorsChunlei Guo, Anatoliy Y. Vorobyev
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Methods for making a material superwicking and/or superwetting (superhydrophyllic) involving creating one or more indentations in the surface of the material that have a micro-rough surface of protrusions, cavities, spheres, rods, or other irregularly shaped features having heights and/or widths on the order of 0.5 to 100 microns and the micro-rough surface having a nano-rough surface of protrusions, cavities, spheres, rods, and other irregularly shaped features having heights and/or widths on the order of 1 to 500 nanometers. Superwicking and/or superwetting materials having micro-rough and nano-rough surface indentations, including metals, glass, enamel, polymers, semiconductors, and others.
Claims19
A method for engineering a surface of a material to be superhydrophilic and to increase a degree of capillary effect on the surface of the material, the method comprising:
- identifying a surface region of the material to increase the degree of capillary effect;
- scanning a first laser spot relative to the identified surface region to produce a first series of adjacent wicking microgrooves;
- scanning a second laser spot relative to the identified surface region to produce additional wicking structures on a surface of the first series of wicking microgrooves, the additional wicking structures comprising an array of parallel nanogrooves that are parallel to the first series of parallel microgrooves;
- wherein the first series of adjacent wicking microgrooves in combination with the array of parallel nanogrooves that are parallel to the first series of adjacent wicking microgrooves increases the degree of capillary effect on the identified surface region.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.