Super-hydrophobicity fundamentals: implications to biofouling prevention

Abstract

The theory of wetting on super-hydrophobic surfaces is presented and discussed, within the general framework of equilibrium wetting and contact angles. Emphasis is put on the implications of super-hydrophobicity to the prevention of biofouling. Two main lines of thought are discussed, viz. i) “mirror imaging” of the Lotus effect, namely designing a surface that repels biological entities by being super-hydrophilic, and ii) designing a surface that minimises the water-wetted area when submerged in water (by keeping an air film between the water and the surface), so that the suspended biological entities have a low probability of encountering the solid surface.