Recently, omniphobic surfaces which have various characteristics such as self-cleaning property and drag reduction have attracted much attention. The application of omniphobicity to food containers is one of effective solutions to improve the food packages. This application is of great importance to reduce the food waste and promote recycling of them which benefits energy saving. However, high viscosity of the foods generally causes difficulty of repellency due to its low sliding speed. Thus, any surface has not achieved effective repellency to highly viscous liquids. Here, we present a liquid-immobilized surface (LIS) which can demonstrate repellency to viscous liquid based on an anisotropic base layer with micrometer-scale roughness. The anisotropic microstructure was fabricated by wearing with a sandpaper in one direction. As a comparison, a boehmite nanostructure was also formed. Figure 1(A) shows schematic image of fabricated LIS and roughness of each base layer. Repellency was evaluated by sliding speed of viscous droplet on the surface inclined in parallel or perpendicular with wearing direction. As a result, the LIS based on the parallel microstructure to sliding direction demonstrated faster sliding speed than the others at all droplet mass as shown in Figure1(B). It is considered that slipping motion of droplet on interface between droplet and lubricant is increased. Application to other substrate such as glass will also be investigated in this study to realize the application to food package.

Effect of base layer morphology in liquid-immobilized surfaces on repellency to viscous liquids

256th National Meeting (2018)

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