Hydrophobically Driven Self-Assembly of Micro/Nanostructures to Construct Ultradurable Superhydrophobic Surfaces

Despite the tremendous potential of superhydrophobic coatings in self-cleaning, anticorrosion, and oil–water separation applications, the inherent trade-off between mechanical durability and dynamic self-repairability remains a critical bottleneck for practical implementation. Herein, we report a supramolecular assembly strategy to controllably fabricate superhydrophobic coatings (i.e., PA66/6-PET@F/Ti) featuring hierarchical micro/nanoarchitectures with embedded molecular memory through hydrophobic interaction-driven dynamic assembly. The coating design exploits molecular-scale memory-reconfiguration effects. The robustness and ultradurability of the coating were verified through oil–water separation, physicochemical damage, and photocatalytic experiments to disrupt the ordered arrangement of the coating’s low-surface-energy molecular chains. Experimental results demonstrate that the PA66/6-PET@F/Ti coating exhibits a water contact angle (WCA) of 171.4°, and the self-repairing efficiencies at 90 °C were 97.5 and 91.4% for the first and sixth times, respectively. In this work, the effect of interfacial reorganization of molecular chains with low surface energy on the self-repairing properties of coatings was investigated by thermodynamically modulating the entropy increase, which provides a useful idea for designing robust interfacial materials.