Abstract: The nature-inspired wettabilities that either extremely repelled or allowed effortless sliding of different liquids (oil/water) in air or underwater are with immense potential for various prospective applications. In common practice, essential chemistry and appropriate topography that conferred the special liquid wettabilities were mostly and generally achieved by associating delicate chemistry. Eventually, the synthesized materials suffered from poor durability issues. In the literature, very few designs are capable of providing durable bio-inspired wettability—but fabrication processes remain generally complex. Moreover, the integration of various other relevant physical properties with such durable liquid wettability is highly challenging to achieve.
Hence, design of robust bio-inspired liquid wettability following a simple fabrication process that would allow to integrate different and relevant physical properties is utmost important for various fundamental and applied contexts. Related to this, recently, our research group has extended conjugate addition reactions between amine and acrylates at ambient conditions to develop tolerant and functional liquid wettability. The controlled tailoring of different bioinspired liquid wettability from the porous and che-mically reactive interfaces—following strategic post modulation of the chemically reactive inter-faces will be discussed in this invited lecture. A strategic association of adequate crosslinkers can provide a highly tolerant and hard superhydrophobic coating on geometrically complex and soft materials. Such a simple chemical approach also allowed to reveal important fundamental aspects related to different bio-inspired wettability. Taking advantage of the durable bio-inspired wettability, the synthesized nature inspired interfaces were successfully applied to demonstrate some practically relevant applications—including controlled release of small molecules, water splitting, oil/water separation, water harvesting, sensing, anticounterfeiting etc.

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The lecture series is organized by the International Scholars and Welcome Office (IScO) of KIT in the framework of the International Excellence Grants Program with funds granted to the University of Excellence concept “The Research University in the Helmholtz Association I Living the Change” in cooperation with the Humboldt-Regional Group Karlsruhe-Pforzheim.