Preparation of superhydrophobic flexible tubes with water and blood repellency based on template method

Superhydrophobic surfaces have been widely used in biology, medicine, aerospace and other fields due to their special surface wettability. The surface wettability of materials mainly depends on the surface chemical composition and surface morphology. Therefore, the wettability of materials can be effectively controlled by changing the surface chemical composition and surface morphology. In this paper, the hydrophobic templates with different wettability were obtained by controlling the laser etching distance of 6061 aluminium alloy tube surface. The superhydrophobic flexible tubes were further fabricated using prepared 6061 aluminum alloy tubes as the template and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) for replica. The contact angles of water and blood could reach 162.8°and 152.1° respectively. By using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), it could be seen that there were micron-sized structures and hydrophobic groups on the surface. The free energy on the surface of superhydrophobic PDMS was 70.7% lower than that on smooth PDMS. In addition, the superhydrophobic flexible tube had excellent durability and abrasion resistance, and the prepared surface was also blood repellency. Blood droplets easily passed through the inclined flexible tube without contaminating the tube. And the superhydrophobic flexible tubes could be used in various fields requiring productivity extensively, such as medical catheters.