Superhydrophobic Surface Preparation and Wettability Transition of Titanium Alloy with Micro/Nano Hierarchical Texture

Microstructures are applied to various hydrophobic/hydrophilic surfaces due to the role of adjusting the surface wettability. In this paper, a 1064 nm pulsed picosecond laser was applied to prepare a micro/nano hierarchical structure on the surface of the titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V). The microstructures consist of dimple arrays with various diameters, depths, and areal densities. They are obtained by controlling the pulse energy and the number of pulses. The nanostructures are periodic ripples, which are defined as laser-induced periodic surface structure (LIPSS), and the dimensional parameter of LIPSS can be adjusted by changing the laser energy density and scanning speed. The contact angles of various laser textured surfaces were measured. It is found that the contact angle increases with the density of micro-textured surface increases, and the wetting state of textured surfaces conforms to the Cassie model. Some laser processed samples were subjected to low-temperature annealing treatment. It is observed that the low-temperature annealing process can accelerate the surface wettability transition significantly, which is attributed to the change of the hydroxyl groups on the surface. Finally, a superhydrophobic surface with the maximum contact angle of 144.58 degrees is obtained.