Superhydrophobic behavior of fluorinated carbon nanofiber arrays

Superhydrophobic behavior of fluorinated carbon nanofiber (CNF) arrays, prepared by a template-assisted synthesis, has been investigated. A thermal chemical vapor method, using perfluorohexane as the precursor, was used to coat fluorocarbon on the surface of the CNFs, thus lowering their surface tension. The F-coated CNFs exhibited a good water-repellent behavior, i.e., the highest value of contact angle similar to 166 degrees. The superhydrophobicity of water droplets on the arrays can be well predicted by a modified Cassie-Baxter model, incorporating the pore size distributions determined from the density functional theory method. This satisfactory result would shed one light on how the variation of opened sizes would induce the superhydrophobicity of nanostructured surfaces.