Recent Advances in the Fabrication of Superhydrophobic Surfaces

As one of the most important parts in the surface and interface science, superhydrophobic surfaces play a significant role in both the fundamental research of functional materials and various applications. Therefore, this research field attracts more and more researchers' attention from all over the world. In the past decades, a large number of biomimetic functional superhydrophobic surfaces have been fabricated inspired from the natural superhydrophobic phenomenon. In this paper, we reviewed the recent advances in the research field of super hydrophobic surfaces, mainly including basic principles, fabrication methods, and applications three aspects. In order to facilitate the comparison, fabrication methods have been divided into three classes at first: coating methods, deposition methods, and the method of direct reproduce (template method). Further, each method is subdivided into several more specific sections such as coatings covering self-assembly coating, grafting coating, electrodeposition, electroless deposition, and so on, according to the theory of the coatings bonding with substrates. For each subsection, the corresponding comments of advantages and partly drawbacks have been summarized. In addition, the peculiar applications of superhydrophobic surfaces, such as waterproof function, antibacterial, antibiofouling, antiscaling, anti-icing, and so on, are also mentioned briefly. Finally, current challenges for this research field are also proposed. The aim of this review is to give a brief and crucial overview of the recent advances in the fabrication of superhydrophobic surfaces.