Development of perfluoropolyether modified raspberry paticles with fine hierarchical structure and their application in superhydrophobic surface

A facile synthetic route for perfluoropolyether modified nanocomposite raspberry particles was designed. In this route, perfluoropolyether derivative, rather than the conventional but controversial long-chain perfluoroalkyl compounds, was applied to fabricate superhydrophobic raspberry particles. The fine dual-sized hierarchical surface structure and fluorine content can be tailored simultaneously by adjusting the silica sol charge at Pickering emulsion polymerization step. The superhydrophobic surface with a max contact angle of 156.4° was obtained by simply drop-casting the perfluoropolyether modified raspberry paticles onto glass substrate. Furthermore, the effects of the surface fluorine content, the hierarchical structure and roughness of the raspberry particles on the hydrophobicity were investigated.