Antifouling effect on biomimetic metamaterial surfaces

Abstract

The snail shells have 200 nm porous structures, and an oil repellent function in water. Three biomimetic structures were fabricated: a silicon black surface, a silicon substrate having nano pillars, and a soft resin sheet having nano pillars. All these structures have equivalent sizes to the real snail shells, and showed good oil repellent effects. The latter two structures have regularly arranged pillars. The last resin sheet was fabricated by using a silicon mold with nano holes and using nanoimprint technologies. As this sheet is soft metamaterial, it can be processed to other shapes. As an example, a tube with oil repellent inner walls was fabricated and evaluated. Good oil repellent and antifouling effect were experimentally obtained from the water-oil mixture flow test. These results indicate the future advances in medical equipment and infrastructure.