Fabrication of Superhydrophobic Gully-Structured Surfaces by Femtosecond Laser and Imprinting for High-Efficiency Self-Cleaning Rain Collection

Freshwater is considered an essential need for humanity. Moreover, it is important to collect and make full use of rainwater. This work utilizes a femtosecond laser to fabricate micro-nanostructures on aluminum alloy substrates as molds. Then, the structures are imprinted on cheap and wildly used polypropylene (PP) materials. The just-imprinted PP surfaces with instinctive surface energy and replicated micro-nanostructures have an excellent superhydrophobic property with contact angles greater than 160 degrees and anisotropic sliding angles smaller than 5 degrees in parallel directions and smaller than 10 degrees in the vertical directions. A small-scale rain collection device formed by a combination of the superhydrophobic PP surfaces is used to investigate the effects of the rain collection efficiency and total surface area relating to manufacturing cost. The rain collection device formed by the imprinted PP surfaces has high rain collection efficiency in terms of the volume of the collected water per square centimeter. For the light rain, the rain collection efficiency can reach an approximated maximum of 90%, more than 100% efficiency improvement of the device formed by flat PP surfaces in some cases. Therefore, the rain collection device is helpful in collecting water from rains in arid areas.

Automated summary

This study uses femtosecond lasers to create micro-nanostructures on aluminum alloy substrates as molds for imprinting on polypropylene materials. The resulting superhydrophobic surfaces exhibit excellent rain collection efficiency, especially in arid areas, with potential for more than 100% improvement compared to flat surfaces.