Plants and animals have often microstructured surfaces to control friction, adhesion, and water repellence and storage. Particularly hairy surfaces that mimic the surfaces of certain plant leaves and the feet of water striders have attracted attention because they may result in low friction and water storing surfaces. In order to create such surfaces several bottom up and top down methods have been developed. Using templates allows rather universal application of polymers, but templates with highly dense holes are hard to get.<br/>Here, we present the synthesis of polymer hairs attached to a surface by using dentin as template, because it contains some 60.000 holes of 2-3 micrometer in diameter per square millimeter. Challenge of this method is the polymerization of various acrylates within the micropores of the dental material. After achieving this and removal of the dentin, hairy surfaces with near perfect structure that can mimic a leave of a plant such as corokia cotoneaster can be obtained. Post modification with hydrophobic particles allows controlling surfaces energy resulting in contact angles of more than 170° and complete adherence of the water drops. Changing the particles surfaces affords an additional implementation of contact-active antimicrobial properties and switching to water repelling behavior.

Polymerization in micro channels of teeth towards artificial leaves

253rd National Meeting (2017)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.