Hairy surfaces by cold drawing leading to dense lawns of high aspect ratio hairs

Abstract

Abstract The surfaces of many organisms are covered with hairs, which are essential for their survival in a complex environment. The generation of artificial hairy surfaces from polymer materials has proven to be challenging as it requires the generation of structures with very high aspect ratios (AR). We report on a technique for the fabrication of surfaces covered with dense layers of very high AR nanoscale polymer hairs. To this, templates having pores with diameters of several hundred nanometers are filled with a polymer melt by capillary action. The polymer is then allowed to cool and the template is mechanically removed. Depending on the conditions employed, the formed structures can be a simple replica of the pore, or the polymer is deformed very strongly by cold drawing to yield in long hairs, with hair densities significantly up to 6,6 × 108 hairs/cm2 at AR of much higher than 200. The mechanism of hair formation is attributed to a delicate balance between the adhesion forces of the polymer in the pore and the yield force acting on it during mechanically demolding. We demonstrate how with very little effort and within a timescale of seconds unique topographies can be obtained, which can dramatically tailor the wetting properties of common polymers.