Nepenthes Inspired Design of Self-Repairing Omniphobic Slippery Liquid Infused Porous Surface (SLIPS) by Femtosecond Laser Direct Writing

In this Communication, femtosecond laser is first used to successfully fabricate a slippery liquid infused porous surface (SLIPS). A kind of 3D porous network microstructure can be directly created on polyamide-6 (PA6) substrate by a one-step femtosecond laser direct writing method. The preparation process of SLIPS mainly includes three steps: femtosecond laser ablation, fluoroalkyl layer modification, and infusion of lubricating liquid. The porous layer and the substrate layer of this as-prepared SLIPS are inherent one material. Such SLIPS has many advantages over the most reported SLIPS fabricated based on “deposition/coating” methods whose porous layers are foreign materials against the substrates. A broad range of liquids including water, hexadecane, lake water, ink, glycerol, coffee, milk, egg white, and egg yolk can easily slide down the 10° tilted SLIPS, revealing that the resultant SLIPS has excellent liquid-repellent ability. Even though the SLIPS suffers from heavily physical damage, the surface can rapidly self-repair without any additional treatment and obtain slippery property again. The developed SLIPS promises to contribute to the achievement of omniphobic materials in self-cleaning, antifouling, biomedical devices, and fuel transport.