Rafael Taboryski’s dissertation is concerned with wetting of solid surfaces and is inspired by surfaces encountered in nature, such as the self-cleaning leafs of the sacred lotus flower or the water droplet pinning rose petals.
These two examples are the key to understand some of the principles described in the dissertation. Wetting of solid surfaces either has particular technological significance for applications where a surface is required to reject certain liquids, or conversely, easily is wetted. The applications range from anti-fog surfaces on windows, goggles, solar cells, glasses, and endoscopes, to repellent surfaces on e.g. medical equipment or food packaging. Often it is wetting with water you are interested in being able to control, but the principles for engineering of surfaces with well-defined wetting properties are the same regardless of which liquid you are interested in rejecting or wetting with.
The dissertation thus describes methods for the design and fabrication of solid surfaces with desired wetting properties. It turns out that these properties can be greatly enhanced if the chemical composition of a surface is supplemented with a surface structuring on micro- and nanoscale. The interaction between the chemistry of a surface and its texture is thus the decisive element and the key to engineer surfaces with very significant wetting properties.
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