Regulating underwater oil adhesion on superoleophobic copper films through assembling n-alkanoic acids

Controlling liquid adhesion on special wetting surface is significant in many practical applications. In this paper, an easy self-assembled monolayer technique was advanced to modify nanostructured copper substrates, and tunable adhesive underwater superoleophobic surfaces were prepared. The surface adhesion can be regulated by simply varying the chain length of the n-alkanoic acids, and the tunable adhesive properties can be ascribed to the combined action of surfaces nanostructures and related variation in surface chemistry. Meanwhile, the tunable ability is universal, and the oil-adhesion controllability is suitable to various oils including silicon oil, n-hexane, and chloroform. Finally, on the basis of the special tunable adhesive properties, some applications of our surfaces including droplet storage, transfer, mixing, and so on are also discussed. The paper offers a novel and simple method to prepare underwater superoleophobic surfaces with regulated adhesion, which can potentially be applied in numerous fields, for instance, biodetection, microreactors, and microfluidic devices.