Photoinduced switchable wettability of bismuth coating with hierarchical dendritic structure between superhydrophobicity and superhydrophilicity

Special wettability such as superhydrophobicity and superhydrophilicity has aroused considerable attention in recent years, especially for the surface that can be switched between superhydrophobicity and superhydrophilicity. In this work, hierarchical bismuth nanostructures with hyperbranched dendritic architectures were synthesized via the galvanic replacement reaction between zinc plate and BiCl3 in ethylene glycol solution, which was composed of a trunk, branches (secondary branch), and leaves (tertiary branch). After being modified by stearic acid, the as-prepared bismuth coating shows super-hydrophobicity with a high water contact angle of 164.8 and a low sliding angle of 3 degrees. More importantly, a remarkable surface wettability transition between superhydrophobicity and superhydrophilicity could be easily realized by the alternation of UV-vis irradiation and modification with stearic acid. The tunable wetting behavior of bismuth coating could be used as smart materials to make a great application in practice. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.