How Swelling, Cross-Linking, and Aging Affect Drop Pinning on Lubricant-Infused, Low Modulus Elastomers

Zhuoyun Cai, Jonathan T. Pham

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

14 Scopus citations

Abstract

Soft, slippery surfaces have gained increasing attention because of their wide range of potential applications, for example in biomaterials, self-cleaning, antifouling, liquid collection, and more. One approach to prepare a soft, slippery surface is by swelling a cross-linked polymer network with a lubricant. However, an understanding of how swelling and cross-linking relate to slippery properties is still underdeveloped for low modulus elastomers. We study when a water drop sticks or slides on a vertical, silicone oil-swollen polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer as a function of the degree of cross-linking and the degree of swelling. Our results indicate that the critical water drop volume required for sliding is strongly controlled by the degree of swelling; higher swelling leads to lower critical drop volumes. In addition, we demonstrate that highly swollen surfaces, and not lightly swollen surfaces, recover their slippery behavior during an aging process after they are rinsed with water. This is likely associated with regeneration of an oil-layer on the surface coming from the bulk substrate, illustrating the durability of lubricant-swollen elastomers for practical uses.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3013-3022
Number of pages10
JournalACS Applied Polymer Materials
Volume4
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - May 13 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Chemical Society.

Funding

This work was primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF, CBET 2043732) and partially supported through the NSF Kentucky EPSCoR (OIA 1849213). The authors also thank Krishnaroop Chaudhuri and Justin Glover for helpful discussion.

FundersFunder number
U.S. Department of Energy Chinese Academy of Sciences Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Project Oak Ridge National Laboratory Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment National Science Foundation National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center National Natural Science Foundation of ChinaCBET 2043732
U.S. Department of Energy Chinese Academy of Sciences Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Project Oak Ridge National Laboratory Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment National Science Foundation National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center National Natural Science Foundation of China
NSF-Kentucky EPSCoR clusterOIA 1849213

    Keywords

    • drop pinning
    • self-lubrication
    • slippery lubricant-infused surfaces
    • soft elastomers
    • wetting

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Process Chemistry and Technology
    • Polymers and Plastics
    • Organic Chemistry

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