N

Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/energy
Review
A review of the recent advances in superhydrophobic surfaces and the

emerging energy-related applications
P. Zhang*, F.Y. Lv
Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics, MOE Key Laboratory for Power Machinery and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240,
China
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 15 November 2014
Received in revised form
8 January 2015
Accepted 18 January 2015
Available online 14 February 2015
A new kind of functional surfaces with particular characteristics, i.e., superhydrophobic surfaces, has
recently been developed and applied in many elds, such as airplane, wind turbine, electric power line,
photovoltaic cell, heat exchanges, ice slurry generator, and so on. The freezing delay and iceaccumulation avoiding on the surfaces are important to keep stable working condition for these devices. The frictional pressure loss of ow through the tubes or channels with superhydrophobic surfaces
is much smaller than that through those without superhydrophobic surfaces. Both the boiling and
condensation heat transfer performances on superhydrophobic surfaces can be enhanced. The superhydrophobic surfaces have potential applications and are worthy further investigations. We provide here
a review of the fabrications, characterization and the emerging energy-related applications of superhydrophobic surfaces on the basis of the recent progresses of the research and development in this eld.
The fabrication of superhydrophobic surface, in particular a recently developed SLIPS (slippery liquidinfused porous surface), is summarized. The focuses are placed on the particular characteristics of
superhydrophobic surfaces and their applications in energy-related elds. The further research topics are
also claried to promote the future applications.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Superhydrophobic surface
SLIPS (slippery liquid-infused porous
surface)
Ice adhesion strength
Friction reduction
Heat transfer
1. Introduction
It is well known that the leaves of many plants such as lotus
leaves show particular characteristics like water-repelling, easily
rolling off the surface and antifouling even though the leaves are
covered by the dirty water or dusts, as shown in Fig. 1(a). The
rainwater can smoothly roll off the lotus leaves without any pinning
[1e6]. If the features of lotus leaves can be functionalized on
various metal surfaces or substrates, it can be useful and helpful in
many applications for energy saving. For examples, it can reduce
the friction of liquid ow, avoid fouling and enhance the heat
transfer performance.
The wettability of a surface can be characterized by the CA
(contact angle). The hydrophilic surface has the contact angle
below 90 . The surface with the contact angle of above 90 is
known as hydrophobic surface, and the surface with the contact
angle above 150 and the rolling angle below 5 is dened as
superhydrophobic surface [7], as shown in Fig. 2. It has been understood that the superhydrophobicity of a surface depends on
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 86 21 34205505; fax: 86 21 34206814.
E-mail address: zhangp@sjtu.edu.cn (P. Zhang).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.01.061
0360-5442/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
both the surface characteristics and surface energy, i.e., the micro/
nanostructures on the surface and modication of surface energy
level by chemical substance.
The contact angle is generally measured when a water droplet
resides on a surface. The states of water droplets on solid surface
are classied into two categories, namely Wenzel state and CassieeBaxter state [7], as shown in Fig. 3. The water penetrates into
the structured (or texture) surface in Wenzel state, which makes
the water droplets pin on the surface and cannot easily roll off the
surface. The water droplets suspending on the texture surface in the
CassieeBaxter state can easily roll off the surface. The corresponding contact angles for CassieeBaxter state are also larger than
that for Wenzel state, which is ascribed to the structured surface
and surface energy. Both the micro/nanostructures or hierarchical
structures and coatings with low surface energy are the two key
factors inuencing superhydrophobicity of the surface because the
binary structure modied with hydrophobic substance can
extremely reduce the surface energy and further enhance the repellent property.
With the advances in fabricating superhydrophobic surfaces on
various metal substrates, these functionalized metal surfaces with
extremely low surface energy are gradually applied in industries
P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087
1069
Fig. 1. Superhydrophobic surface and its applications. (a) Lotus leaf [1]; (b) solar cell panel [12]; (c) ship with superhydrophobic surface; (d) airplane with superhydrophobic [20].
and daily life. For example, the high ratio of surface to volume of
microuidic device strongly affects the ow behavior, which increases the pressure loss signicantly. Therefore, superhydrophobic
surfaces are applied to microuidic device or microchannels to
reduce the pressure loss effectively [8]. Another example is that the
plate heat exchangers with such functional surfaces can effectively
avoid milk fouling and prevent the reduction of the heat transfer
performance during the pasteurization process [9].
It is well known that the efciencies of solar cells and wind
turbines working under the severe conditions are drastically
decreased due to the ice and snow accumulation [10,11], and the
issues of removing ice from surfaces aroused great attention. The
methods of removing ice from surfaces can be divided into two
categories: the rst one is active method which includes thermal
treatments, mechanical scraping and using de-icing chemical
agents. The active method is employed after the ice formation,
which needs a lot of efforts to separate the ice from the surfaces;
the second one is the passive method which prevents the ice formation or ice adhering to surfaces even though the icing occurs.
The passive method can effectively remove the ice from the surfaces, in which there is less energy consumption because of the
lower ice adhesion strength, resulting in energy-saving. The passive
method has potential applications in many aspects such as airplane,

wind turbines, photovoltaic devices [12], electric power lines [13],
ship, and so on, as shown in Fig. 1(b) and (c). The passive method
based on superhydrophobic surface can prevent ice accumulation
and reduce the ice adhesion to the surface. It is well known that the
icing occurs and ice adheres to the airplane surface when it passes
through the freezing temperature zones, which will cause catastrophic risks [14e17]. Although the temperatures of the icing experiments are not lower enough compared to that of aircraft
surfaces when it passes through the freezing temperature zones,
the experimental results can still be instructive and useful for the
aircraft to improve the ight performance [18,19]. Fig. 1(d) shows
the image of the airplane with superhydrophobic coating [20]. The
inuence of wettability on ice adhesion strength on a standard
NACA0021 airfoil with superhydrophobicity was studied by Antonini et al. [21] in the icing wind tunnel. The experimental results
revealed that the superhydrophobic coatings could prevent ice
accumulation on airfoil, resulting in a reduction of as high as 80% of
energy used to avoid ice accretion on a normal airfoil. The ice
adhesion strength to superhydrophobic surface is much lower than
that to the normal surface. Therefore, the superhydrophobic surface
shows the characteristics of ice-repelling, which is essential in the
anti-icing applications.
Fig. 2. The states of surfaces with different contact angles [7].
Fig. 3. The states of droplets on texture surface [7].
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Condensation is a frequently-encountered process in industries,

such as in power generation, heat exchangers, and so on. The
lmwise condensation generally occurs on the surface with high
surface energy, like various metal surfaces, where the heat transfer
coefcient is reduced because the liquid lm on the metal surface
deteriorates the heat transfer. But the dropwise condensation occurs on the metal surface with superhydrophobic coating, in which
the condensed droplets can be rapidly detached from the cold
surface under the gravity. Therefore, the heat transfer performance
is enhanced due to low thermal resistance [22]. The superhydrophobic surface shows the characteristics that can be applied
to drag reduction in laminar or turbulent ows. For examples, the
pressure loss through the tubes or channels with superhydrophobic
surfaces can be effectively reduced, and the convective heat
transfer coefcient is also improved to a certain degree, which is
attributed to the acceleration of uid velocity [23]. The surface
wettability plays a key role in boiling heat transfer, where the heat
transfer coefcient is enhanced due to the rapid departure of
nucleation bubbles from the surface with a small superheat [24].
The superhydrophobic surface can also nd applications in other
elds. For examples, the ice slurry can be used as the secondaryloop refrigerant, which serves as the heat transfer uid as well as
energy storage medium for air conditioning system to reduce the
energy consumption. The ice slurry can be generally prepared using
generation system with superhydrophobic surface where the ice
slurry particles will less likely adhere to the surface or block the
tubes. Therefore, the superhydrophobic surface has potential applications in ice slurry generation [25]. The ratio of cost of fabricating superhydrophobic surfaces to benet is not high, because
the cost of chemical agents is not expensive and the fabrication is
not complicated. The superhydrophobic surfaces can effectively
enhance the energy-saving in the energy-related applications. The
ratio of cost to benet will further decrease once the large-scale
applications are realized.
The above context indicates that the superhydrophobic surfaces
have many potential applications in industries, in particular in
energy-related elds, which has been summarized in Fig. 4. This

paper presents a review of superhydrophobic surfaces and their
applications, which is arranged as follows. The fabrications and
characterization of the superhydrophobic surfaces are introduced
rst. Then, the characteristics, such as wettability, anti-frosting and
anti-icing, lower ice adhesion strength, are described, and many
energy-related applications of superhydrophobic surfaces are discussed as well.
2. Superhydrophobic surface and SLIPS (slippery liquidinfused porous surface)
2.1. Fabrications of superhydrophobic surfaces and SLIPS on metal
substrates
In industrial applications, various kinds of metals or alloys, such
as copper, brass, aluminum, stainless steel, are used to manufacture
the tubes and heat exchangers. Therefore, it is important to fabricate superhydrophobic surfaces on metal substrates. However,
some examples of the superhydrophobic surfaces on silicon substrates are also included for comparison. The procedures of fabricating superhydrophobic surfaces on metal substrates include two
steps: rst, fabricating micro/nano-hierarchical structures; second,
modifying the structural surface with chemical substances with
low surface energy. The superhydrophobicity of the modied surfaces is characterized through the contact angle. The superhydrophobic surfaces based on various metal substrates are
described as below.
The superhydrophobic surfaces with slice-like Cu2(OH)3NO3
structures on copper foils were fabricated by Kong et al. [26]. It can
be seen from Fig. 5(a) that the binary micro/nanostructures were
prepared on copper foils through immersing the foils into sodium
hydroxide aqueous solution and cupric nitrate aqueous solution
sequentially. The slice-like Cu2(OH)3NO3 lms were formed on the
surface and then modied with FAS-17 (1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-peruorodecyltriethoxysilane). The modied surface showed a contact
Fig. 4. The applications of superhydrophobic surfaces.
1071
Fig. 5. Fabrication of the superhydrophobic surface and binary micro/nanostructures. (a) the process of fabricating the binary structures on copper foils [26]; (b) SEM images of CuO
microcabbages formed on copper foils; (1) low magnication with scale bar of 10 mm; (2) high magnication with scale bar of 3 mm; (3) the partially enlarged detail of (2); (4) and
(5) the sharp edges of CuO nanoplates [27].
angle of 162.7 1.3 and a very small rolling angle, and the contact
angle remained almost unchanged after being heated at 100 C for
24 h. The surfaces exhibited stable superhydrophobicity even
though the surfaces were exposed in air for one month. The
superhydrophobic surfaces with contact angle of 155 were prepared by Liu et al. [27]. The morphologies of CuO on copper foils
shown in Fig. 5(b) exhibited the hierarchical micro/nanostructures.
The cabbage-like protrusions distributed uniformly on the surface,
and a large number of nanoplates were formed on the cabbage-like
protrusions, resulting in the excellent superhydrophobicity. The
grade-304 stainless steel substrate was used to fabricate superhydrophobic surface by Li et al. [28], where the contact angle of the
superhydrophobic surface was measured to be 157.3 2.8 . Lv and
Zhang [29] fabricated the superhydrophobic surfaces on aluminum
alloy substrates, and the contact angle was as high as 162.5 with
the rolling angle of 1.9 .
The superhydrophobicity of surface with binary micro/nanostructures might fade away under the extreme conditions, such as
high pressure, immersed in liquids for a long time or under the
effect of shear stress. To address these problems mentioned above,
the concept of slippery liquid-infused porous surface (SLIPS) was
proposed by Wong et al. [30] through the lubricant uid locked in
the nanostructured surfaces, which was inspired by the Nepenthes
pitcher plants. The SLIPS has pressure stability, small sliding angle
and low CAH (contact angle hysteresis). The procedures of fabricating the SLIPS are shown in Fig. 6. The treated lubricant-infused
surface displayed excellent outperfomances in stability, defect-
Fig. 6. Procedures of fabricating SLIPS on functionalized porous or textured solid with

lubricant. The lubricated surface exhibited lower contact angle hysteresis, and the
immiscible liquid droplet rolled off the lubricated surface when the surface was
slightly tilted [30].
free, high pressure resistance, self-healing and repelling various

liquids including crude oil, blood and hydrocarbons comparing
with superhydrophobic surface with micro/nanostructures which
trapped air. The SLIPS showed the ability of repelling water at the
pressure of 676 atm, illustrating that SLIPS maintained high pressure resistance. The contact angle hysteresis of SLIPS was below
2.5 . The reason was that four phase systems of SLIPS, i.e., solid
surface, lubricant, air and water showed novel contact line morphologies which prevented the water pinning on the surface [31]. It
was found that the distinct morphologies reduced the pinning force
and made the droplets easily slide on the surfaces. The micro/
nanostructured surfaces infused with lubricating liquids exhibited
superior properties of repelling various liquids compared with
superhydrophobic surfaces.
The SLIPS on aluminum surface was prepared by Kim et al. [32],
and the frost, freezing and ice adhesion to the SLIPS were also
investigated. The experimental results revealed that the frosting
and icing were suppressed. The ice adhesion strengths to SLIPS,
bare aluminum and icephobic materials were 15.6 kPa, 1359 kPa
and 165 kPa, respectively, revealing that the ice adhesion strength
to SLIPS decreased at least one order of magnitude compared to the
conventional superhydrophobic surface. The ice adhesion strength
on lubricant-infused porous surfaces was studied by Subramanyam
et al. [33]. The SEM (scanning electron microscopy) images of
lubricant-impregnated surface and the ice adhesion strength on
both excess lubricant lm and equilibrium lubricant lm are illustrated in Fig. 7. The results revealed that the ice adhesion strength
to the surface with equilibrium lubricant was much higher than
that to the surface with excess lubricant, which was attributed to
the increase of the number of crack initiation sites by excess
lubricant on the lubricant lm, thus leading to the stress concentration. Rykaczewski et al. [34] fabricated nanostructured coating
infused with peruorinated oil, and they found that both the icing
and frost formation on such lubricant-infused surfaces were
accompanied by the disappearance of the lubricant. The experimental results showed that the lubricant-infused surfaces would
lose superhydrophobicity once the lubricant in the cavities was
depleted.
It can be understood from the above-mentioned content that
the superhydrophobic surfaces can be fabricated on various metal
1072
superhydrophobic surface with carbon nanotube structures was

also investigated by Sethi and Dhinojwala [39]. The superhydrophobic surface was tested under the extreme conditions, such
as immersed in liquid nitrogen, heated up to the temperature of
300 C for 2 h and immersed in the boiling water for 1 h, and the
results showed that the contact angles were 155 e170 after it was
exposed in the extreme conditions, which indicated that the
superhydrophobic surface had excellent durability. The steel plate
with hydrophobic surface could effectively prevent the corrosion
from occurring compared with the bare steel plate, which exhibited
that the hydrophobic surface had the anti-corrosion properties
[40]. The metal or metallic substrates with superhydrophobic
coatings could effectively prevent corrosion because the air trapped
in the cavities could separate the liquids from the surfaces [41].
The durability of superhydrophobic surface is a key parameter
for the practical applications, which determines the performance of
the devices in the long-term operation. It can be understood that
the superhydrophobicity can be maintained for a certain period of
time, but it is still not robust enough and cannot completely meet
the requirements for the practical applications even though the
hydrophobicity is kept after superhydrophobic surfaces were
immersed in various solutions. Therefore, more efforts are still
needed to develop robust superhydrophobic surface for
applications.
Fig. 7. SEM images of lubricant-impregnated surface. (a) Excess lubricant; (b) equilibrium lubricant; (c) the ice adhesion strength on excess and equilibrium lubricant
lms [33].
substrates using combining methods of etching and surface

modication. The contact and rolling angles of superhydrophobic
surfaces are above 150 and below 5 , respectively, and the stability
of superhydrophobic surfaces can be maintained for a certain time.
Superhydrophobic surfaces can be easily made on a larger substrate, which indicates that the superhydrophobic surfaces on
metal substrates can be possibly used for practical applications. In
general, the SLIPS is fabricated by infusing the modied porous
metal surface with lubricant, which shows outperformance, such as
smaller sliding angle, high pressure resistance, self-healing, good
durability, and so on. These merits indicate that the SLIPS will be a
potential functional surface for applications. However, the divergences about the particular characteristics between the SLIPSs
also exist, so the further investigation is still necessary.
2.2. Durability of superhydrophobic surfaces
The durability of superhydrophobic surface is very important for
the practical applications, which determines if the superhydrophobic surfaces can be used in the elds. In order to investigate the inuence of water on the lifetime of superhydrophobic
surface under different ow conditions, the experiments were
conducted in the pressure vessel, and the experimental results
revealed that the lifetime of superhydrophobic surface decreased
with the increase of ow rate, and the drag reduction on the
superhydrophobic surface disappeared, which were attributed to
the accelerating the dissolution of air into water under ow condition [35]. The durability of copper superhydrophobic surface at
the humidity of 95% was tested by Rao et al. [36]. The results
demonstrated that the superhydrophobicity of the surface did not
change signicantly after a period of 90 days. The durability of
superhydrophobic surface at high temperature was investigated in
Refs. [37,38], and the results revealed that the durability decreased
with the increase in temperature. The durability of steel
3. The particular characteristics of superhydrophobic

surfaces
3.1. Freezing time delay and anti-icing on superhydrophobic
surfaces
The freezing time delay and anti-icing of superhydrophobic
surface are signicantly important for many applications, such as
airplane, wind turbine, electric power line, etc. The ice accumulation on the surfaces of these devices will drastically decrease the
performance or even lead to catastrophic event. Therefore, the
freezing time delay and anti-icing on superhydrophobic surfaces
are subjected to intensive investigation. It is well known that the
freezing time of water droplets on superhydrophobic surfaces is
signicantly retarded because the heat transfer between droplet
and solid surface is weakened by the trapped air in the cavities
under the liquidesolid interface.
Anti-icing behavior of superhydrophobic surfaces on aluminum
alloy substrates was studied by Ruan et al. [42]. The experimental
results showed that the superhydrophobic surfaces exhibited
excellent anti-icing properties at the ambient temperature of 16 C,
and the time period of icing process on superhydrophobic surfaces
was postponed from 406 to 676 s compared to the normal
aluminum alloy surface, where the icing temperature was
decreased from 2.2 to 6.1 C. The water droplets on the titled
polished surfaces froze at 3.9 C, but the water droplets rolled off
the
superhydrophobic
surface
even
the
temperature
reached 8.0 C. The freezing experiment was conducted on silicon
superhydrophobic surfaces coated with OTS (octadecyltrichlorosilane) [43]. Compared with normal surfaces, the freezing
temperature of water droplets on OTS lm was decreased even
to 15 C, which was due to the reason that icing probability was
dependent on the free energy barrier, namely, the lower the free
energy barrier is, the easier the droplet freezes. The freezing process of water droplets on various surfaces with the contact angle
varying from 97.2 to 154.9 was experimentally investigated by
Huang et al. [44]. The experimental results revealed that the
freezing time of water droplets was retarded with the increase of
contact angle. The effect of surface morphologies on freezing delay
was experimentally investigated by Heydari et al. [45]. It was
demonstrated that the surface morphologies affected freezing time

delay in that the contact angle on superhydrophobic surface
decreased with the decrease of temperature, which was attributed
to the condensation of vapor around the droplet. Sarshar et al. [46]
studied the icephobic characteristics of superhydrophobic surfaces
under dynamic ow conditions in the low temperature wind tunnel
with CCD (charge coupled device) camera to observe the ice formation and accumulation on superhydrophobic surfaces. Ice formation and accumulation were signicantly delayed on the
superhydrophobic surfaces. It was revealed that the time periods of
ice formation and accumulation were related to the contact angle
hysteresis and the scale of surface roughness of superhydrophobic
surface. In order to improve the performance of the photovoltaic
panels, the snow on the surface of the photovoltaic cell must be
removed, where the superhydrophobic surfaces can be applied.
3.2. Frost formation and defrosting on superhydrophobic surfaces
It is well known that the frost formation on surface is a complex
process in particular on a superhydrophobic surface. Recently,
Boreyko and Collier [47] investigated frost formation and growth
on superhydrophobic surfaces, and they reported that the subcooled condensate (very small water droplet) on superhydrophobic
surface showed the self-propelling and jumped off the surface
before it turned into solid phase. Frost formed initially at the edge
of superhydrophobic surface and then spread over the entire surface. The growth rate of frost on superhydrophobic surface was
three times smaller compared to the normal or hydrophobic surfaces due to the reason that the contact area between the droplet
and superhydrophobic surface was very small. The results
demonstrated that the growth rate of frost signicantly depended
on both the wettability of the surface and the contact area between
the droplet and surface. Frost formation was reduced on the
condenser with superhydrophobic surface through preventing
heterogeneous ice nucleation and delaying frost growth.
1073
The frost formation process on the cooled surface included two

stages, namely, the frost nucleation on the top of and between the
porous structures and then continuous growth on the surface. A
mathematical model was developed to evaluate the transition between these two stages [48], and the theoretical results were
compared with the experimental results from the literature [49],
which indicated this model could be used to evaluate the transition
during the frost formation. It is very important to clarify whether or
not the superhydrophobic surface has the ability of anti-frosting. In
order to avoid frost formation and icing on substrate surfaces, the
dynamic defrosting on nanostructured superhydrophobic surfaces
was investigated by Boreyko et al. [50]. The spherical water droplet
formed on the nanostructured superhydrophobic surface after the
frost melted into water. During the dynamic defrosting process, the
frost detached from the surface and was also absorbed by the
melting water to form a big droplet, and it rolled off the superhydrophobic surface once the surface titled slightly. The results
showed that the frost could be removed easily from the nanostructured superhydrophobic surface. In order to deepen the understanding of water behavior on the surfaces and extend
applications of superhydrophobic surfaces, the experiments of
frosting and defrosting on superhydrophobic surfaces were carried
out by Jing et al. [51]. They revealed the effect of wettability of
various surfaces on frosting and defrosting, in particular the exible
and rigid superhydrophobic surfaces. It can be seen from Fig. 8(a)
that the condensed water droplets with aspherical shapes adhered
to the hydrophobic and exible superhydrophobic surfaces, but for
the rigid superhydrophobic surface the condensed water droplet
showed a perfect spherical shape and moved easily from the surface. The mechanism of frost release from rigid superhydrophobic
surface is illustrated in Fig. 8(b) and (c). The melting occurred rst
at the interface between frost and surface, and then the frost was
absorbed by the liquid to form a spherical water droplet. These
similar characteristics were also demonstrated in Ref. [50]. The
experimental results showed that the adhesion strength between
Fig. 8. Dynamic defrosting process on various surfaces. (a) hydrophobic, exible and rigid superhydrophobic surfaces with contact angles of 123 , 165 and 167, respectively; (b)
schematic of the mechanism of release of frost layer from rigid superhydrophobic surface; (c) image of release of frost layer from rigid superhydrophobic surface [51].
1074
the frost and rigid superhydrophobic surface was very small.

Although the exible superhydrophobic surface also exhibited the
anti-frosting characteristics but only the rigid superhydrophobic
surfaces could defrost effectively. Compared with the exible
superhydrophobic surfaces, the rigid superhydrophobic surfaces
were the most effective in frosting and defrosting. Up to now, the
mechanisms of icing and frosting on superhydrophobic surfaces are
not fully understood yet. In order to fabricate icephobic surface
which may delay frost and ice formation, Jung et al. [52] proposed
the mechanism of frosting under different conditions, and the
experimental results revealed that the evaporation from a supercooled water droplet generated a condensation halo around the
droplet. The surface behavior was affected by the crystal of droplet.
Xu et al. [53] investigated the frost-free superhydrophobic surface,
and they found that the superhydrophobic surface based on Teon
gasket substrate could maintain frost-free state over 90 min. The
frost formed on superhydrophobic surface disappeared by the
intermittent air ow heating, which effectively reduced the energy
consumption. These results showed that superhydrophobic surface
could be applied to heat exchanger.
3.3. Ice adhesion strength to superhydrophobic surfaces
It is known that ice adhesion strength to surface plays a key role
in anti-icing applications, where the ice adhesion strength to
various surfaces may serve as fundamental information. The ice
adhesion strength to normal surface is much larger than that to the
surface with superhydrophobicity, and the accumulation of ice or
snow on the superhydrophobic surfaces is inhibited due to the low
ice adhesion strength to the surfaces.
Recently, many researchers conjectured that the icephobicity
might not be directly related to the superhydrophobicity. The ice
adhesion strength and interaction analysis on the superhydrophobic surfaces were conducted by Hejazi et al. [54], where
they discussed how ice adhesion was different from that of water
through force balance analysis. It was concluded that icephobicity
was not equivalent to superhydrophobicity. They also conducted
the experiments on anti-icing of various surfaces and proposed a
denition of icephobicity which covered a variety of situations
relating to anti-icing and low ice adhesion strength. In order to
investigate the anti-icing performance of superhydrophobic surfaces, Farhadi et al. [55] conducted icing/deicing experiments in a
wind tunnel at a temperature of 10 C. The ice adhesion strength
between ice and surface was estimated by centrifugally spinning
the sample. The micro/nanostructures of superhydrophobic surface
were broken during icing/deicing cycles. The experimental results
demonstrated that the anti-icing efciency of superhydrophobic
surface in the cycle test decreased in a humid environment. Water
condensation between surface asperities occurred, resulting in high
ice adhesion strength. These results revealed that the icephobicity
of superhydrophobic surface failed usually in the humid environment. To prevent the ice accumulation on the surfaces, the adhesion experiments on aluminum surface coated with PTFE
(polytetrauoroethylene) were conducted by Menini et al. [56]
using the centrifugal technique. The experimental results showed
that the ice adhesion strength to the coated surface was only a
quarter of that to bare aluminum, and the performance of icephobic
surface was not deteriorated after 14 times of icing/deicing tests,
which demonstrated that this kind of PTFE coating with excellent
mechanical properties had potential applications in industries.
The ice adhesion strengths to various surfaces modied with
FAS (uoroalkylsilane) were obtained by Wang et al. [57] at the
temperature of 6 C. The ice adhesion strengths for samples C and
D were 0.94 kPa and 0.58 kPa, respectively, which were only 0.98%
and 0.61% of total ice adhesion strength of bare aluminum surface;
but the ice adhesion strengths were 12.6 kPa and 7.1 kPa for samples A and B, which were 11.76% and 6.94% of total ice adhesion
strength of bare surface. The increasing trends of ice adhesion
strengths for samples A, B and C were the same, but the values for
sample A were much higher than those for sample C with the increase of icing/deicing cycles. The values for sample D were
maintained the same during the icing/deicing cycles. Such trends of
ice adhesion strength were attributed to the changes in superhydrophobicity during the deicing cycles. The ice adhesion strength
to superhydrophobic surface coated with polymerization of
HMDSO (hexamethyldisiloxane) was investigated by Mobarakeh
et al. [58] after the icing/deicing cycles. It can be seen from Fig. 9
that the shear stress increased after several icing/deicing cycles
due to the decrease of contact angle. The experimental results
showed that the ice adhesion strength to superhydrophobic surface
was only 41.67% of that for bare aluminum surface after 15 icing/
deicing cycles. The ice adhesion strength to the surface with SLWL
(self-lubricating liquid water layer) was prepared by Chen et al.
[59], and the experimental results showed that the ice adhesion
strength for the surface with SLWL was one order of magnitude
lower than that for the superhydrophobic surfaces due to the
reason that the ice and surface were separated by the SLWL. The ice
adhesion strengths on SLWL surface did not increase during the
icing/deicing cycles, which demonstrated that the surface with
SLWL exhibited excellent anti-icing and durability characteristics.
The variation of ice adhesion strength to superhydrophobic surface
with icing/anti-icing cycles was studied by Kulinich et al. [60]. The
ice adhesion strength increased and contact angle decreased with
the condensation time. The experimental results revealed that the
anti-icing and water repellence performances for superhydrophobic surface were deteriorated during the icing/deicing
cycles.
The ice adhesion strengths to surfaces with the wettability
changing from superhydrophilic to superhydrophobic were investigated by Wang et al. [61]. The ice adhesion strengths were
1700 kPa, 1200 kPa, 800 kPa and 200 kPa for the superhydrophilic,
hydrophilic, hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces, respectively. These differences in ice adhesion strength were attributed to
the changes of surface wettability. The durability of the superhydrophobic surface was examined through measuring the ice
adhesion strength during the icing/deicing cycles. The ice adhesion
strengths increased from 220 to 340 kPa during the rst 8 cycles
and maintained at almost the same values during the following
cycles. Ice adhesion strengths to hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces were studied by Kulinich and Farzaneh [62]
Fig. 9. Variation of ice adhesion strength and contact angle with the number of icing/
deicing cycles [58].
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through rotating the sample until the ice detached from the sample
surface. The ice adhesion strength on sample with low CAHs was
much lower than that on sample with large CAHs, but the CA almost
had no effect on ice adhesion strength. The results demonstrated
that the ice adhesion strength decreased with the decrease of CAH.
From the above-mentioned context, the ice adhesion strength decreases with the increase of contact angle in most cases, but the ice
adhesion strength was reported to decrease with the decrease of
contact angle hysteresis in some studies. Therefore, further investigation is necessary to ascertain the relationship among ice
adhesion strength, contact angle and contact angle hysteresis, in
particular the mechanism of ice adhesion strength to the surface.
In order to investigate the effect of advancing/receding contact
angles on ice adhesion strengths on various surfaces, the relation
between advancing/receding contact angles and ice adhesion
strengths was analyzed by Meuler et al. [63], and a correlation to
calculate the average ice adhesion strength through receding contact angle was proposed as follows:
chloride < copper. The experimental results demonstrated that the

ice adhesion strength between the ice and surface depended on the
surface energy but showed no dependence on the heat ux during
cooling.
The ice adhesion strength to superhydrophobic surface is
generally much lower than that to normal surface, and the durability of superhydrophobic surface decreases after several icing/
deicing cycles as reported in most of literature, but the durability of
icephobic surface is still maintained even after several icing/deicing
cycles as reported in some literature, which demonstrates that the
further investigation is still necessary to clarify such discrepancy. In
addition, the ice adhesion strength is also affected by the surface
energy and surface compositions in that the ice adhesion strength
decreases with the decrease of surface energy, and the surface
composition can also inuence the ice adhesion strength, demonstrating that surface modication can effectively reduce the ice
adhesion strength.
tice 34040 kPa1 cos qrec
4. Emerging applications of superhydrophobic surfaces
(1)
The ice adhesion strength can be precisely evaluated using this

correlation compared with the correlations based on the static
contact angle or advancing contact angle, and the calculated values
coincided with the experimental results. The experimental results
demonstrated that the ice adhesion strength to the surfaces coated
with uorodecyl POSS (polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane)containing materials was only 19.23% of that for bare surfaces.
The inuence of the distributions of hydrophobic and hydrophilic groups on surface on ice adhesion strength was measured
and analyzed by Matsumoto and Daikoku [64]. It can be seen from
Fig. 10(a) that the ice adhesion strength increased with the increase
of concentration of carboxyl group (OeC]O), and the contribution
of carboxyl group to ice adhesion strength was much larger than
that of carbonyl group (C]O). The ice adhesion strength decreased
in the order of GWCC > GWGC > GWFC, and the surface containing
CF2 and CF3 bonds had the smallest ice adhesion strength among all
the sample surfaces because the GWFC had the smallest surface
energy, which agreed with the results in Ref. [65]. In order to make
clear whether or not the ice adhesion strength is related to the heat
ux during cooling, the adhesion energy between the ice and surface was estimated by Matsumoto and Kobayashi [66], which
yielded that the surface energy of bare copper was much larger
than that of the nonmetallic materials (glass and vinyl chloride). It
can be seen from Fig. 10(b) that the thermal resistances decreased
in the order of vinyl chloride > glass >> copper, but for the ice
adhesion strength increased in the sequence of glass < vinyl
4.1. Liquid ow through channels or tubes with superhydrophobic

surfaces
The frictional pressure drop of liquid ow in channels or tubes
accounts for a big portion of the total pressure drop in a hydraulic
system. Therefore, the ow friction reduction of uid ow through
channels or tubes with superhydrophobic surface is of practical
importance for applications. Recently, both numerical and experimental approaches are employed to investigate the friction
reduction of uid ow in channels or tubes with superhydrophobic
surfaces. The friction reduction of superhydrophobic surfaces is
shown in Table 1, which indicates that the energy consumption for
liquid ow through tubes or channels with superhydrophobic
surfaces can be largely reduced.
The drag reduction and velocity prole across the microchannel
exhibiting superhydrophobicity were measured directly by Ou and
Rothstein [67] using microparticle image velocimetry (m-PIV), and
they further compared the experimental results with the numerical
results. It was indicated that the slip velocity at the aireliquid
interface reached more than 60% of average velocity. However, the
slip did not occur at the top surface of the microridges. The comparison of velocity proles of experimental and numerical results is
shown in Fig. 11. It is shown that the experimental and numerical
results were consistent, and the slip velocity and slip length both
increased with the increase of microridge spacing. The slip characteristics were caused by the aireliquid interface between the
Fig. 10. The correlation among ice adhesion strength, atomic concentration of chemical bonds and thermal resistance of surfaces; (a) the ice adhesion strength and atomic concentration of C]O and OeC]O bonds of different surfaces, (GWCC, CWGC and GWFC represented glass plate coated with copper, copper plate coated SiO2 and glass plate coated
with uorine, respectively) [64]. (b) The ice adhesion strength and thermal resistance of surfaces [66].
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Table 1
Friction reduction of uid ow past through channels or plates with SHS.
Authors
Channel/plate
Flow type
Friction reduction
Gogte et al. [72]

Martell et al. [73]
Park et al. [74]
Daniello et al. [75]
Hydrofoil with SHS

Channel with SHS
Plate with SHS
Plate with SHS
Laminar ow
Turbulent ow
Turbulent ow
Turbulent ow
10%
40%
75%
50%
microridges of the superhydrophobic surface. The analytical and

experimental studies of laminar ow through the microchannel
with superhydrophobic surface were conducted by Maynes et al.
[68]. The analytical model of air ow within the cavities was
coupled with the numerical model of bulk liquid ow at the aireliquid interface, and then it was used to analyze the characteristics of slip ow by considering that the velocities and shear stresses
at the aireliquid interface were the same for both air side and liquid
side, respectively. The numerical results revealed that the slip
length and reduction in the product of friction factor-Reynolds
number (fRe) increased with the increase of width and depth of
cavity. Choi et al. [69] studied the slip length and friction reduction
of water ow through the microchannels with superhydrophobic
surfaces. the experimental results revealed that the slip length was
100e200 nm, and the pressure drop was reduced by 20%e30%
compared to the microchannels with normal surfaces. The slip of
liquid ow over hydrophobic surface was experimentally investigated by Lee et al. [70]. The results revealed that the ratios between
slip length and pitch (namely, the length scale of the surface
texture) were 0.15 and 0.3 for the gas fractions at 50% and 85%,
respectively. The largest slip length reached up to 185.0 mm for the
gas fraction of 98% and pitch of 200 mm. They found that the slip
length depended on both the gas fraction and the pitch. Truesdell
et al. [71] measured the slip length and drag reduction of lowReynolds number shear ow between two surfaces, one of which
had superhydrophobic surface. The results showed that the slip
length was 10 times larger than the groove size (25.0 mm), and the
drag for superhydrophobic surface was reduced by 20.0% compared
to the untreated surface. Gogte et al. [72] studied the drag reduction
of uid ow over superhydrophobic hydrofoil. And the drag was
Fig. 11. Comparison of velocity proles of experimental and numerical results on

superhydrophobic surface. The solid and open symbols denoted the width and spacing
of the microstructures of 30 30 mm and 30 60 mm, respectively. The symbols of
solid triangle, solid square and open square represented the center of microridge, the
distance from the shear-free interface of 30 mm and the distance from the shear-free
interface of 60 mm. The solid lines were numerical results [67].
reduced by over 10% compared to the normal surface, which was

explained as the reduction of contact area at the interface of
liquidesolid.
In order to study the drag reduction performance of turbulent
ow over superhydrophobic surface, the direct numerical investigation of turbulent ows past the superhydrophobic surfaces with
microposts and microridges was carried out by Martell et al. [73].
The top surfaces of the microposts did not exhibit slip characteristics, but the interface of the aireliquid between microposts
appeared shear-free. The numerical results showed that the mean
slip velocity reached as high as 75% of bulk velocity, and the wall
shear stress was decreased by approximate 40% at the Reynolds
number of 180. The slip velocity and drag reduction on the superhydrophobic surface increased with the increase of spacing of microstructures and the interface area of aireliquid. In order to
understand the drag reduction performance of turbulent layer on
superhydrophobic surface, the experiments of turbulent ow were
carried out by Park et al. [74] on both smooth and superhydrophobic surfaces. The experimental results indicated that the
frictional drag was reduced on superhydrophobic surface under
turbulent ow condition, which was even reduced by as high as
75% of total frictional drag of smooth surface. The variations of drag
force with gas fraction, namely aireliquid interface fraction, were
depicted in Fig. 12. It can be seen that the drag force decreased with
the increase of gas fraction, and the drag force was lower for pitches
of 100 mm than that for pitches of 50 mm. The drag reduction performance was improved as the gas fraction increased. In order to
understand the mechanism of drag reduction of turbulent ow
over superhydrophobic surface, Daniello et al. [75] measured the
slip velocities and shear stresses of laminar and turbulent ows
over the superhydrophobic wall at the Reynolds number ranging
from 2000 to 9500 using pressure drop measurement and particle
PIV (particle image velocimetry) technique. The drag reduction
increased with the increase of space between micro/nano-textures
at a certain Reynolds number. The pressure drop per unit length for
liquid ow through microchannels with superhydrophobic surfaces
was much lower than the one with smooth surfaces. In particular,
when the Reynolds number was larger than 3000, the increment of
pressure drop for superhydrophobic surfaces was only half of that
for smooth surfaces. The drag reduction began to work when the
thickness of the viscous sublayer was comparable to the size of
microstructures of the surface and further enhanced as the
decrease of the height of viscous sublayer. The slip velocity and drag
reduction of liquid ow through microchannels with
Fig. 12. Variation of the drag with gas fraction. The blue solid circle represented the
pitches of 50 mm, and the pitches shown in red solid square was 100 mm [74]. (For
interpretation of the references to colour in this gure legend, the reader is referred to
the web version of this article.)
superhydrophobic surfaces were also found to increase with the

Reynolds number. The wall shear stress of the ow over superhydrophobic surface is shown in Fig. 13, which revealed that the
drag reduction only occurred on superhydrophobic surface, indicating that superhydrophobic surface can lead to drag reduction of
liquid ow.
Liquid ow on superhydrophobic surface is generally treated with
slip ow boundary condition, which is different from the no-slip
boundary condition in usual cases. Numerical investigation of slip
ow of laminar developing ow in channels was conducted by
Muzychka and Enright [76] through employing the slip boundary
conditions, and the results revealed that the dimensionless mean
wall shear stress was the function of local dimensionless axial distance and relative slip parameter, which could be applied to apparent
slip ow in the channels with superhydrophobicity. There might be a
temperature jump for boundary condition when considering heat
transfer from the superhydrophobic surface to the liquid. The numerical investigation of fully-developed ow in a vertical rectangular
plates channel with one superhydrophobic wall was conducted by
Wang and Ng [77], in which the slip and temperature jump boundary
conditions were applied to the superhydrophobic wall. The numerical results showed that the volume ow rate and the Nusselt
number were affected by the slip velocity and the temperature jump
near the superhydrophobic surface. The Nusselt number increased
under the effect of superhydrophobic slip when the normal surface
was heated, but the Nusselt number decreased once the heating was
imposed on superhydrophobic surface.
The drag reduction of uid ow over superhydrophobic surfaces
is very signicant compared to normal surfaces, which can be
potentially useful for pumping power reduction. The drag reduction
of uid ow over superhydrophobic surface is signicantly dependent on velocity gradient near the superhydrophobic surface, and the
drag reduction increases with the increase of the Reynolds number.
4.2. Boiling heat transfer on superhydrophobic surfaces
The boiling heat transfer is frequently used in the heat transfer
devices, such as heat exchanger, boiler, and so on, due to the high
Fig. 13. Wall shear stress vs. the Reynolds number for channel surfaces with and
without superhydrophobicity. The empty triangles and solid circles denoted the results
of the channels with smooth wall and superhydrophobic wall with the width of 30 mm
and spacing of structures of 30 mm. The solid line showed the calculated result for the
channel with smooth wall using the Colebrook equation [75].
1077
performance. The heat transfer coefcient on superhydrophobic

surface is better than that on normal surface. The characteristics of
boiling heat transfer on superhydrophobic surfaces are completely
different from those on smooth surfaces, and the knowledge of
boiling heat transfer on superhydrophobic surfaces is still limited.
Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the boiling heat transfer on
superhydrophobic surfaces.
The hydrophobic (PTFE) and superhydrophobic (SWR (superwater-repellent)) surfaces were used as heat transfer surfaces in
the pool boiling experiments [78]. The nucleation boiling heat
transfer on the treated surface was improved seven times as that on
normal copper surface. The bubbles formed uniformly on both SWR
and PTFE surfaces at the superheat of 1.5 K and 2.97 K, as shown in
Fig. 14(a) and (b). The bubbles easily detached from the treated
surface, and the nucleation temperatures for the treated surfaces
were much lower than that for bare copper surface. Wettability of
surface played a key role in phase change heat transfer. In order to
investigate the mechanism of boiling heat transfer on superhydrophobic surface with a coating layer of nickel particles and
PTFE, the experiments of boiling heat transfer on superhydrophobic
surface were carried out [79]. The bubble nucleation appeared on
the superhydrophobic surface at very low superheat, and the small
bubbles coalesced into big bubbles without departing from the
surface. Finally, the vapor lm which covered most of the surface
area formed. The results revealed that stable lm boiling appeared
on superhydrophobic surface even at very small superheat. The
small bubbles which appeared on the superhydrophobic surface
coalesced with each other to form a vapor lm on the surface even
at the temperature of superhydrophobic surface below the saturation temperature. The inuences of wettability and surface
structures on nucleation boiling heat transfer performance were
experimentally investigated by Jo et al. [80]. It can be seen from
Fig. 15(a) that the bubble formed on the hydrophobic surface and
grew with time in the initial stages, as shown by images 1e4 in
Fig. 15(a). As the bubble growing big enough, it departed from the
hydrophobic surface, as shown by image 5 in Fig. 15(a), and a small
bubble remained on the surface as the nucleation site for the next
bubble growth, as shown by image 6 in Fig. 15(a). The base area of
the bubble shrank into necking and then departed from the heated
surface. These dynamic processes periodically appeared during the
bubble evolution process. It can be seen from Fig. 15(b) that the
boiling heat transfer performance for hydrophobic surface was
higher than that for hydrophilic surface at low superheat, but at
large superheat, the boiling heat transfer performance for superhydrophobic surface became worse compared to that of hydrophilic
surface because the vapor lm formed on superhydrophobic
surface.
The experiments of boiling heat transfer were conducted by
Forrest et al. [24] to investigate the relationship between heat
transfer performance and surface wettability. A large amount of
bubbles appeared on the nickel wire with hydrophobic surface and
departed from the surface, but only a few bubbles formed and
detached from the surface of the bare nickel wire. This phenomenon indicated that the bubbles easily formed on hydrophobic surface, and the heat transfer coefcient of hydrophobic surface was
higher than that of the hydrophilic surface, and the heat transfer
performance was enhanced on hydrophobic surface compared to
the hydrophilic surface. The wall superheat for hydrophobic surface
was much lower than that for bare surface, and the heat transfer
coefcient was enhanced by about 100%. The boiling heat transfer
performances of superhydrophilic, hydrophilic, hydrophobic and
superhydrophobic surfaces were studied by Vakarelski et al. [81]. It
can be seen from Fig. 16(a)e(c) that the bubbles were easily formed
on hydrophobic surface compared to superhydrophilic and hydrophilic surfaces at small superheat (the corresponding surface
1078
Fig. 14. Behavior of boiling bubble on the treated surfaces. (a) super-water-repellent (SWR) surface; (b) polytetrauoroethylene (PTFE) surface [78].
Fig. 15. The bubble evolution on hydrophobic surfaces and heat transfer curves of hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces. (a) the growth and departure of the bubble on hydrophobic
surface at the superheat of 3.97 K; (b) heat transfer curves for hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces [80].
Fig. 16. The heat transfer process on various surfaces. (a)e(c) were nucleate-boiling at the surface temperature of 108 C; (d) was Leidenfrost lm-boiling at the surface temperature
of 210 C; (e) the relation between heat uxes and surface; SHL, HL, HB and SHB represented superhydrophilic, hydrophilic, hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces,
respectively [81].
temperatures were 108 C for these cases), but for the superhydrophobic surface shown in Fig. 16(d) the sustained vapor layer
formed adjacent to its surface at the surface temperature of 210 C.
As shown in Fig. 16(e), the boiling heat transfer performances for
superhydrophilic, hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces were better compared to superhydrophobic surface at high surface temperature, in which the trend of boiling heat transfer performance
agreed with the results in Ref. [80]. The Leidenfrost phenomenon
occurred on both hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces as
the surface temperatures increased. Betz et al. [82] investigated the
inuence of surface wettability varying from superhydrophilicity to
superhydrophobicity on the number of nucleation sites. The results
demonstrated that the number of nucleation sites on superhydrophobic surface were larger than that on hydrophobic, hydrophilic and superhydropilic surfaces at small superheat, which
was ascribed to the reason that the air cavities on the superhydrophobic surface provided a large number of nucleation sites
compared to the other surfaces, as shown in Fig. 17. This result also
revealed that the nucleate boiling phenomenon easily occurred on
superhydrophobic surface at small superheat. The heat transfer
performance of ow boiling in rectangular microchannel was also
inuenced by the surface wettability. Therefore, the visualization
experiments on ow boiling heat transfer were carried out by Choi
et al. [83]. It was found that the heat transfer coefcient for hydrophilic surface was lower than that for hydrophobic surface in
the entire vapor quality region, and the heat transfer coefcient
increased rst and then decreased with vapor quality. The critical
vapor quality corresponding to the local dry-out for hydrophobic
surface was larger than that for hydrophilic surface, which indicated that the dry-out on hydrophobic surface was delayed
compared to the hydrophilic surface, and it was also revealed that
the ow boiling heat transfer performance was enhanced with the
hydrophobic surface.
The relationship between surface wettability and boiling heat
transfer was studied by Hsu and Chen [84]. The CHF (critical heat
ux) on the surfaces with the wettability varying from hydrophilic
to superhydrophobic was obtained, which indicated that the CHF
for hydrophilic surface was larger than that for superhydrophobic
surface. The inuence of surface wettability on growth process of
bubbles on heating surface is shown in Fig. 18(a). There were almost
no bubbles formed on superhydrophilic surface shown in Fig. 18(a1). It can be seen from Fig. 18(a-2) that very small bubbles formed
Fig. 17. The nucleation sites on various surfaces. SHPo and SHPi represented the
superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic surfaces, respectively [82].
1079
on hydrophilic surface, and the amount and size of bubbles with

spherical shape increased with the hydrophobicity. As shown in
Fig. 18(a-4), the vapor lm formed on superhydrophobic surface. It
can be seen from Fig. 18(b) that the CHF decreased with the surface
wettability changing from superhydrophilicity to superhydrophobicity, i.e., with the increase of the contact angle. The very
low CHF values were obtained on superhydrophobic surfaces
because the air trapped in the surfaces caused the decrease of CHF.
The hydrophobic copper surfaces with CNT (carbon nanotube)
structures were applied to investigate the inuence of wettability
on ow boiling heat transfer performance [85]. The nucleation
density for CNT hydrophobic surface was much higher than that for
the blasted copper surface, and the CHFs on CNT hydrophobic
surfaces were enhanced by 21.6%, 14.28% and 6.69% compared to
the blasted copper surface for the mass uxes of 183, 348 and
427 kg/m2s, respectively. The decrease of CHF with the increase in
mass ux revealed that the effect of CNT hydrophobic surface on
CHF was less at high mass ux.
The boiling heat transfer performance on superhydrophobic
surfaces is enhanced compared to those on hydrophilic surfaces at
small superheat. The superheat needed for the bubble nucleation
on superhydrophobic surfaces is lower than that on hydrophilic
surfaces due to the trapped air acting as nucleation sites in cavities
of superhydrophobic surfaces. But the transition from nucleateboiling to lm-boiling for superhydrophobic surface is easily triggered compared to the hydrophilic surface with the increase of
superheat, which led to a low CHF.
4.3. Condensation on superhydrophobic surfaces
Similar to boiling, condensation is often encountered in industrial processes. It is known that the heat transfer coefcient for
dropwise condensation is enhanced 5e7 times compared to the
lmwise condensation [86]. It can be seen from Fig. 19 that the
condensation patterns on copper tube surfaces with the wettability
changing from superhydrophilic to superhydrophobic were very
different. The lmwise and dropwise condensations formed on the
bare and silane coating copper surfaces, as shown in Fig. 19(a) and
(b), respectively. The small droplets coalesced with each other and
jumped off the superhydrophobic surface because of the release of
excess surface energy [22], as shown in Fig. 19(c). The ooding
condensation formed on the nanostructured surface, as illustrated
in Fig. 19(d), which was attributed to the nucleation sites density on
this surface was very large. Therefore, the heat transfer performance on superhydrophobic surface was better than those on hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces.
The experimental results on superhydrophobic surface with
monolayer lm of n-octadecyl mercaptan revealed that superhydrophobic surface did not enhance the heat transfer performance compared with the mirror-polished surface in the dropwise
condensation [87], which was attributed to the decrease in surface
energy difference of liquidesolid interface between the condensate
and the condensing surface. The relation between detach frequency
of condensed droplets and heat transfer performance was investigated by Dietz et al. [88] through ESEM (environment scanning
electron microscopy). The droplets formed on hydrophobic surface
coated with Rain-X did not detach from the surface, and the
number of droplets decreased with time due to the coalescence
with each other. The number of droplets formed on superhydrophobic surface with cupric hydroxide nanostructures
decreased with time, which demonstrated that superhydrophobic
surface could accelerate the droplets to detach from the surface.
The heat transfer performance was enhanced once the condensed
droplets departed from the surface, which made the renewal frequency of surface increase. Torresin et al. [89] investigated the ow
1080
Fig. 18. The appearance of boiling and critical heat ux on surfaces with different wettabilities. (a) The effect of surface wettability on bubbles growth; (b) variation of critical heat
ux with contact angle [84].
condensation on superhydrophobic and oxidized surfaces. The

condensed water droplets which penetrated into the nanostructured superhydrophobic surface were removed from the
structures by the help of vapor ow. The experimental results
showed that the heat ux imposed on superhydrophobic surface
was about 600 kW/m2 at the vapor velocity of 18 m/s. It can be seen
from Fig. 20 that the dropwise condensation for superhydrophobic
surface could be maintained for ve days, which demonstrated that
the heat transfer performance of superhydrophobic surface was

better at the beginning of ve days and then became worse
compared to the oxidized surface.
The condensation of water on superhydrophobic surface was
studied by Wier and McCarthy [90], and the experimental results
revealed that the phase change process from vapor to liquid
occurred on the top of and between the pillars. The condensed
macro-water droplets coalesced with the small water droplets
Fig. 19. Condensation of vapor on copper tube surfaces with different surface conditions. (a) bare copper surface; (b) smooth copper surface coated with silane; (c) nanostructured
surface with superhydrophobicity (the inset showing the partially magnied view); (d) nanostructured surface [22].
1081
Fig. 20. The heat transfer curves on superhydrophobic and oxidized surfaces at the
vapor velocity of 12 m/s and saturated temperature of 110 C. DWC and FWC represented dropwise and lmwise condensations, respectively [89].
between the pillars to form larger droplets. The mobility of water

condensed on superhydrophobic surface decreased signicantly
because the contact angle hysteresis for superhydrophobic surface
wetted by condensate was much larger than that for dry superhydrophobic surface. The continuous dropwise condensation on
superhydrophobic surface was investigated by Chen et al. [91]. The
experimental results revealed that the condensed water was easy
to penetrate into the microstructured or nanostructured surface,
but it was hard to penetrate into the binary micro/nanostructured
surface. The droplets nucleated on both the top of and between
pillars in initial stage, and then they gathered together and coalesced to form a large droplet on the top of the pillars. The droplets
continued to coalesce with each other, moved randomly at the
same time and disappeared nally. The condensed water droplet
was easily removed from superhydrophobic surface during the
condensation, which implied that the binary micro/nanostructured
surface coated with hexadecanethiol exhibited excellent
superhydrophobicity.
Narhe and Beysens [92] studied the dynamic condensation on
superhydrophobic surface. The nucleation, coalescence and
mobility for condensed droplets on superhydrophobic surface are
illustrated in Fig. 21. It can be seen in Fig. 21(a) that the nucleation
of droplets formed on the side, top of and between pillars in the
initial stage, and then the droplets on both the side and top of the
pillars coalesced with each other in Fig. 21(b). The big droplets
continued to coalesce and form larger droplet on the top of the
pillars, and the droplet penetrated into the gap between pillars in
Fig. 21(c). As condensation continued, the superhydrophobic surface with pillars was covered by the condensed water, as shown in
Fig. 21(d), which corresponded to the Wenzel state. The continuous
dropwise condensation on both hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces was studied by Boreyko and Chen [93]. The
condensation process was divided into three stages including initial
growth of small droplets, immobile and mobile coalescences. As
shown in Fig. 22, water nucleation occurred in the initial stage on
two kinds of surfaces, and the condensed droplets distributed
randomly on both the hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces
in the stage 2. The droplets on hydrophobic surface coalesced with
each other in the vicinity to form lager stationary droplets
(Fig. 22(a), after 20 min), but for superhydrophobic surface, the
Fig. 21. Formation of condensed droplets on superhydrophobic surface. (a) initial

stage; (b) the condensed droplets on the top of structures coalescing with each other;
(c) the coalesced droplet penetrating into the gap between structures; (d) the structures covered by condensed water [92].
coalesced droplets moved and disappeared from the view elds

(Fig. 22(b), stage 3). In stage 3, the condensed droplet was easily
removed and disappeared during the coalescence process,
demonstrating that the superhydrophobic surface had potential
applications in condensation devices.
The dynamic process of condensed droplets on superhydrophobic surface with spike-like structures was investigated by
Narhe and Beysens [94]. The entire process was divided into three
stages based on the variation of the radius of droplet with the
length scale of spike-like structures. The small droplets formed
uniformly on both the top of and between structures at the initial
stage when the radii of the droplets were smaller compared to the
length scale of spike-like structures. The droplets coalesced with
each other in the vicinity to form bigger droplets at the intermediate stage. The spike-like structures were covered by the larger
droplets which coalesced from the bigger droplets in the last stage.
The mechanism of condensation on superhydrophobic anodic
aluminum oxide surface was analyzed by Wu and Zhang [95]. It was
found that the density of nucleation sites for condensing droplets
on superhydrophobic surface was very small and it was easy for the
condensed droplets to roll off the superhydrophobic surface at even
a small tilted angle. The heat transfer performance during jumpingdroplet condensation on superhydrophobic surface was studied by
Miljkovic et al. [96]. The small condensed water droplets jumped
off from superhydrophobic surface. The experimental results
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Fig. 22. Dropwise condensation on different surfaces. (a) hydrophobic surface; (b) superhydrophobic surface, stages 1, 2 and 3 represented initial growth of droplet condensation,
immobile and mobile coalescences, respectively [93].
showed that the overall heat ux and the condensation heat

transfer coefcient on copper superhydrophobic surfaces were
enhanced by 25% and 30% compared to the hydrophobic surfaces,
respectively. The frost melting and molten water on n surface with
superhydrophobicity were experimentally investigated by Liang
et al. [97], and the results showed that the masses of the retained
water on the hydrophilic, bare, hydrophobic and superhydrophobic
n surfaces were 0.109, 0.091, 0.065 and 0.022 g, respectively,
which revealed that the superhydrophobic n surface could prevent water pinning on the n surface and reduce the energy consumption. Sommers et al. [98] studied the performance of
condensate drainage on tube n heat exchanger with hydrophobic
surfaces, and the results revealed that the surface of the n with
hydrophobicity could accelerate drainage of condensate water by
more than 27% compared to the normal surface of the n. The
hydrophobic surface of the n could also reduce the air-side pressure drop of the heat exchanger under wet conditions by about
30%e36% compared to the normal surface of the n.
The condensation on superhydrophobic surface is different from
that on normal surface in particular on metal surface due to the
difference in wettability. The condensed water droplets are easily
removed and departed from the superhydrophobic surface, but the
condensed water droplets pin on the normal surface, and then form
a liquid lm on the surface. The thermal resistance is largely
reduced once the liquid lm disappears. Therefore, the superhydrophobic surface can effectively avoid the formation of liquid
lm, leading to a better heat transfer performance, which demonstrates that superhydrophobic surface can be applied in industries
and daily life, such as condensation and dehumidication to
improve heat transfer performance and reduce energy
consumption.
Ice slurry was continuously generated through the heat

exchanger with uorocarbon coating on the inner surface of the
tube [25]. It can be seen from Fig. 23(a) that the absolute value of
supercooling degree of heat exchanger coated with uorocarbon
was much higher than the uncoated one at the velocities varying
from 1.5 to 2.5 m/s, but the optimal velocity was 1.95 m/s for
both coated and uncoated surfaces. The ice generation duration
at different velocities is displayed in Fig. 23(b), which demonstrated that the performance of ice generation for the coated heat
exchanger was much better than that for the uncoated one due to
the reason that the icing time was retarded, and the ice adhesion
was reduced on the coated surface. The experimental results
revealed that the efciency of ice generation was improved using
4.4. Ice slurry generation on superhydrophobic surfaces

Ice slurry has been adopted as both heat transfer uid and energy storage medium in air condition system to improve the
operating efciency and reduce energy consumption [99e101]. Ice
slurry is usually generated through the methods such as scraped
surface generator [102e104], orbital rod ice slurry generator [105],
supercooling method [106e108], and so on. In these methods, the
ice particles easily attach to the surfaces even block the ow
channels [106]. The operation of ice generation is interrupted once
the blocking occurs. In order to address these issues, superhydrophobic surface can serve as a potential solution to avoid ice
adhering to the tube surface.
Fig. 23. Ice slurry generation through heat exchanger with uorocarbon coating on the
inner surface of the tube. (a) The difference of supercooling degree between coated
and uncoated surfaces; (b) ice generation durations at different velocities [25].
heat exchanger coated with uorocarbon which exhibited

superhydrophobicity. The ice slurry generation using superhydrophobic surfaces can retard the ice adhesion and avoid ice
blockage. The experiments were carried out by Wang et al. [109]
to generate ice slurry using heat exchanger with coating lm of
uorocarbon. From the comparison of ice slurry generation on
both normal and uorocarbon surfaces at the temperature
of 5 C, the quantity of ice slurry production on coated surface
was larger than that on uncoated surface for both pure water and
tap water, and the quantity of ice slurry generated from pure
water was smaller than that from the tap water because the tap
water had a plenty of impurities which induced the nucleation
easily.
The superhydrophobic surface can be applied to ice slurry
generation, which is an effective method to improve the generation
efciency and avoid the ice blockage. Ice slurry can be generated
continuously in tubes or heat exchangers with superhydrophobic
surfaces for a long operational duration, and the ice particles with
uniform size distribute homogeneously in slurry.
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4.5. Industrial applications of superhydrophobic surfaces

Superhydrophobic surfaces are still at the initial stage of the
applications, and they gradually nd the applications in many
elds, such as, ow drag reduction, anti-frosting and anti-icing,
heat transfer enhancement and so on.
The drag reduction of a ship model with superhydrophobic
surface at high speed was investigated by Dong et al. [110]. The
experimental results showed that the drag force on normal surface
was higher than that on superhydrophobic surface. In the experiments, the wetting areas for normal and superhydrophobic surfaces were 144 cm2 and 136 cm2, respectively. The inuence of
wetting area on drag reduction was not signicant because the
difference of wetting areas for both normal and superhydrophobic
surfaces was very small. The velocity gradient of superhydrophobic
surface was very small due to the existence of the slip boundary
layer at the contact interface, which remarkably reduced the shear
stress and drag force. The experimental results demonstrated that
the drag reduction was decreased by 38.5% for the ship model with
Fig. 24. Frost formation process and variation of frost mass with time for various surfaces. (a) frost formation process on microchannel heat exchanger with various coatings at the
temperature of 7 C, (1) normal surfaces, time (min) a:0 b:8 c:17 d:26; (2) hydrophilic coating, time (min) a: 0 b: 10 c: 20 d: 32; (3) hydrophobic coating, time (min) a:0 b:8
c:16 d:23; (b) variation of frost mass with time for various surfaces at different temperatures [115].
1084
superhydrophobic surface compared with that with normal surface, which demonstrated that the drag force could be reduced by
employing superhydrophobic surface.
The performance of heat pump is extremely deteriorated
because of the additional thermal resistance of the frost formed on
the surface of the n of heat exchanger. In order to address this
issue, Kim et al. [111] investigated the heat transfer performance of
hydrophobic surface of n during the frost formation process, and
the experimental results revealed that the surface of the n with
hydrophobicity exhibited a consistent heat ow of 230 W
throughout the experiment, which was due to the effect of frosting
delay. The defrosting experiments on n-tube heat exchanger with
hydrophobic surfaces were carried by Jhee et al. [112]. The n-tube
heat exchanger with hydrophobic surface could effectively enhance
the defrosting efciency, and the heat transfer performance for
heat exchanger with hydrophobic surface was improved by about
10.8% compared to the one with bare surface. The surfaces of the n
with different wettabilities were employed to investigate the
defrosting behavior [113], and the experimental results showed
that the melting water almost did not retain on the superhydrophobic surface compared to the hydrophilic surface. Wang
et al. [114] studied the frosting and defrosting properties of n tube
heat exchanger with bare and superhydrophobic surfaces, and they
found that the mass and thickness of frost formed on the tube heat
exchanger with superhydrophobic surfaces were 28.8% and 17.1%
less than those on the bare tube exchanger. The melting water
retained on the hydrophilic n surfaces and formed a water lm
layer, but for the superhydrophobic n surfaces only little melting
water retained on the surfaces. The dynamic frost formation process on microchannel heat exchangers with louvered n was
investigated by Moallem et al. [115] to understand the inuence of
water retention on hydrophilic and hydrophobic coatings on
frosting performance and frost growth rates. It can be seen from
Fig. 24(a) that the frost on the normal and hydrophilic surfaces was
thicker than that on hydrophobic surface as time elapsed. As can be
seen in Fig. 24(b), the amount of frost on all surfaces increased with
the decrease of temperature, and the inuence of surface coating
was weaker compared to surface temperatures. The experimental
results suggested that the frost with difference appearances and
patterns accumulated on the hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces.
The coated and uncoated louvered n microchannel heat exchangers were similar in the duration of frosting cycle and heat
transfer performance. It was found that the heat transfer performance for the heat exchanger with hydrophobic coatings was
improved by 15% compared with the uncoated heat exchanger
during the frost formation period. The heat transfer performance of
heat exchanger with hydrophobic dimpled-sheets was investigated
by Lara and Holtzapple [116] through the dropwise condensation
experiments, and the results showed that the heat transfer coefcient on naval brass sheets with Ni-P-PTFE (nickelephosphorus and
polytetrauoroethylene) hydrophobic coatings was 99.4 kW/
(m2 K), but for the normal naval brass sheets the heat transfer coefcient was only 16.5 kW/(m2 K). The overall heat transfer coefcient for copper sheets with Ni-P-PTFE hydrophobic coatings
reached 159 kW/(m2 K). In addition, the overall heat transfer coefcient for the copper heat exchanger with round-shaped vertical
grooves which had lead-free Ni-P-PTFE hydrophobic coatings was
as high as 240 kW/(m2 K) [117], but the overall heat transfer coefcient was 78 kW/(m2 K) for the heat exchanger with bare titanium
plates. The experimental results demonstrated that the heat
transfer performance was enhanced once the dropwise condensation occurred on the heat exchanger surfaces with hydrophobic
coatings, and also implied that hydrophobic surface could be
applied to thermal management. The heat transfer performance of
vapor
chamber
with
superhydrophobic
surfaces
was
experimentally investigated by Sun et al. [118], and their results

demonstrated that the chamber with superhydrophobic surface
could effectively reduce the heater temperature and have uniform
temperature distribution which could be applied to cooling of the
power electronic devices.
The self-cleaning property of superhydrophobic surface is
necessary to prevent the degradation of efciency of solar cells
because the snow or dust can easily detach from the surfaces.
Superhydrophobic coating was applied to solar cells with a
dimension of 22 24 cm by Choi and Huh [119] to investigate the
effect of superhydrophobic surface on light to electricity efciency
of solar cells, and the results revealed that the short-current densities and open circuit voltages were 6.43 mA/cm2, 0.63 V and
6.72 mA/cm2, 0.63 V for normal and superhydrophobic surfaces,
respectively, as shown in Fig. 25. The overall enhancement in energy conversion efciency of solar cells with superhydrophobic
surface was about 10% against the solar cells with normal surface.
The solar cells with superhydrophobic coatings was illustrated in
the top right of Fig. 25. The self-cleaning property of superhydrophobic surface was applied to the solar cells by Park et al.
[120]. The experimental results revealed that the self-cleaning
property of a superhydrophobic surface was helpful to maintain
the efciency of the solar cells at high level, and the efciency was
recovered from 6.56% to 9.78% after cleaning process.
The superhydrophobic surfaces have potential applications in
many aspects due to the positive performances, such as drag
reduction, dropwise condensation, good heat transfer performance,
self-cleaning, etc. But there are still points needed to be investigated or improved, for examples, the large-scale fabrication with
simple method and application of superhydrophobic surfaces to
energy systems. The durability is not robust enough so that the
superhydrophobic surface with long-term durability is necessary to
Fig. 25. The current densityevoltage characteristics of solar cells with and without
superhydrophobic surface, Ref and Patterning represented normal and superhydrophobic surfaces, respectively. The microstructures and superhydrophobic solar
cells illustrated on the top of the gure [119].
be studied. However, the mechanism of boiling heat transfer performances on superhydrophobic surfaces, namely the heat transfer
coefcient, bubble formation and evolution process and CHF, are
not clear and need more investigation. At present, the superhydrophobic surfaces are mostly used on the air side, but not on the
refrigerant side in a refrigeration system. Even if the lubricant oil of
the compressor is absorbed into the micro/nanostructures of
superhydrophobic surfaces, it can not form SLIPS because the
lubricant oil does not contain uorine and can not reduce the
surface energy. The peruorinated oil used to fabricate SLIPS has an
ultra-low surface tension. However, the compatibility of the
superhydrophobic surface with the refrigerant and lubricant oil is
worthy of further investigation.
5. Conclusions
In this review, recent researches and developments of superhydrophobic surfaces and their applications have been presented.
The fabrication processes of superhydrophobic surfaces on metallic
substrates are briey introduced by focusing on recently arrestive
SLIPS. The attractive properties of superhydrophobic surfaces, such
as freezing time delay, ice-accumulation preventing, reducing ice
adhesion strength, are discussed in detail. The durability is one of
the most important factors that determine the practical application
of superhydrophobic surfaces, which are inuenced by many factors, e.g., temperature and corrosivity.
Superhydrophobic surface can nd many applications in industries, e.g., using superhydrophobic surface to retard the frost or
ice formation on the surfaces of heat exchangers and prolong the
duration of the ice slurry generation, using superhydrophobic
surface to enhance the heat transfer performances of boiling and
condensation, using superhydrophobic surface for drag reduction,
and so on. Such applications are of positive signicance for energy
saving and performance improvement. Although superhydrophobic surfaces have been subjected to intensive investigations, it is apparent that further investigations are still
necessary in both fundamental and applicational aspects, for examples, the fabrication process of superhydrophobic surface needs
to be simplied; the durability and robustness are necessarily to be
improved for the practical applications; the uid ow and heat
transfer characteristics and mechanisms on superhydrophobic
surfaces or in the channels with superhydrophobic surfaces are
different from those for normal surfaces and both experimental and
theoretical researches are indispensable.
Acknowledgment
This research is jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under the Contract No. 51176109 and
NSFC-JSPS cooperative project under the contract No. 51311140169.
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Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

A review of the recent advances in superhydrophobic surfaces and the

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

method has potential applications in many aspects such as airplane,

Fig. 2. The states of surfaces with different contact angles [7].

Fig. 3. The states of droplets on texture surface [7].

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

Condensation is a frequently-encountered process in industries,

energy-related elds, which has been summarized in Fig. 4. This

Fig. 4. The applications of superhydrophobic surfaces.

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

Fig. 6. Procedures of fabricating SLIPS on functionalized porous or textured solid with

free, high pressure resistance, self-healing and repelling various

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

superhydrophobic surface with carbon nanotube structures was

substrates using combining methods of etching and surface

3. The particular characteristics of superhydrophobic

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

demonstrated that the surface morphologies affected freezing time

The frost formation process on the cooled surface included two

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

the frost and rigid superhydrophobic surface was very small.

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

chloride < copper. The experimental results demonstrated that the

tice 34040 kPa1 cos qrec

4. Emerging applications of superhydrophobic surfaces

The ice adhesion strength can be precisely evaluated using this

4.1. Liquid ow through channels or tubes with superhydrophobic

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

Gogte et al. [72]

Hydrofoil with SHS

microridges of the superhydrophobic surface. The analytical and

Fig. 11. Comparison of velocity proles of experimental and numerical results on

reduced by over 10% compared to the normal surface, which was

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

superhydrophobic surfaces were also found to increase with the

performance. The heat transfer coefcient on superhydrophobic

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

on hydrophilic surface, and the amount and size of bubbles with

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

condensation on superhydrophobic and oxidized surfaces. The

the heat transfer performance of superhydrophobic surface was

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

between the pillars to form larger droplets. The mobility of water

Fig. 21. Formation of condensed droplets on superhydrophobic surface. (a) initial

coalesced droplets moved and disappeared from the view elds

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

showed that the overall heat ux and the condensation heat

Ice slurry was continuously generated through the heat

4.4. Ice slurry generation on superhydrophobic surfaces

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

heat exchanger coated with uorocarbon which exhibited

4.5. Industrial applications of superhydrophobic surfaces

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

experimentally investigated by Sun et al. [118], and their results

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

P. Zhang, F.Y. Lv / Energy 82 (2015) 1068e1087

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