Technology Description

The inventors at the University of Iowa have developed a novel method to make metal surfaces with varying wettability and reflective properties. This new method is based on the fundamental principles of nanosecond laser-based high-throughput surface nanostructuring (nHSN) process and can easily be scaled up for any metal surfaces. This process decouples extreme wettability from surface topography and is capable of independently controlling surface structures and surface chemistry for both superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic regions to have a stable wettability.Wettability-patterned surfaces comprising consecutive superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic regions in a designed orderliness can enable effective control of fluids in specific wettability segments. Most known surface processes require the use of masking to selectively process extreme wetting areas for metals and alloys. This multi-step process can be time consuming and expensive. This novel method allows for low-cost and high-throughput fabrication of large size, curved and flat metallic surfaces.

• Economic and scalable manufacturing technique on flat and curved surfaces.
• Works for a wide range of metal alloys.
• Enables extreme wettability of metal surfaces by creating surface nanostructures and desired chemistry.
• This method does not need use of Masking layers which makes the manufacturing process faster and less complicated.