Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 388 (2012) 235242

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Journal of Colloid and Interface Science

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A new method for producing Lotus Effect on a biomimetic shark skin

Yunhong Liu, Guangji Li
School of Materials Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 14 April 2012
Accepted 14 August 2012
Available online 27 August 2012
Keywords:
Biomimetic surface
Shark skin
Microreplication
Lotus effect
Superhydrophobicity

a b s t r a c t
Nature has long been an important source of inspiration for mankind to develop articial ways to mimic
the remarkable properties of biological systems. In this work, a new method was explored to fabricate a
superhydrophobic dual-biomimetic surface comprising both the shark-skin surface morphology and the
lotus leaf-like hierarchical micro/nano-structures. The biomimetic surface possessing shark-skin pattern
microstructure was rst fabricated by microreplication of shark-skin surface based on PDMS; and then it
was treated by ame to form hierarchical micro/nano-structures that can produce lotus effect. The fabricated biomimetic surfaces were characterized with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), water contact
angle measurements and liquid drop impact experiments. The results show that the fabricated dual-biomimetic surface possesses both the vivid shark-skin surface morphology and the lotus leaf-like hierarchical micro/nano-structures. It can exhibit excellent superhydrophobicity that the contact angle is as high
as 160 and maintain its robustness of the superhydrophobicity during the droplet impact process at a
relatively high Weber number. The mechanism of the micromorphology evolution and microstructural
changes on the biomimetic shark-skin surface was also discussed here in the process of ame treatment.
This method is expected to be developed into a novel and feasible biomimetic surface manufacturing
technique.
2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Nature provides abundant examples of structures, materials
and surfaces which can be investigated to understand the basic
principle and subsequently developed into fascinating technical
applications [1]. The term biomimetic, which means learning from
nature as an impulse for an independent technical design [2] is already popular in the eld of materials science and engineering.
There are many examples of biomimetic design originated from
the investigation and copy of the special properties and mechanisms of natural plants and animals [3,4].
Such an example is the shark skin effect, which is dened as a
mechanism of wall friction reduction of a uid resulted from a riblet structured surface similar to that of shark skin [5]. Shark skin
has been widely studied for decades due to its drag reduction
and antifouling properties [68]. Micron-sized grooved scales
growing on shark skin, which are called dermal denticles, are interlocked to form a natural non-smooth surface; and the grooves between adjacent riblets on the scales are directed almost parallel to
the longitudinal body axis of the shark. It has been reported that
the grooved scales can reduce vortice formation or lift the vortice
off the surface, so resulting in water moving easily over the skin
Corresponding author. Fax: +86 20 87113949.
E-mail addresses: liuyunhong_9@163.com (Y. Liu), gjli@scut.edu.cn (G. Li).
0021-9797/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcis.2012.08.033

surface [911]. Besides, the rough texture formed by dermal denticles can reduce the adhesion area available to aquatic organisms
and keep the surface clean. It is exciting that the principle has been
adapted to aeroplane surfaces and achieved fuel-saving by about
1.5% [12]. Speedo invented the full-body swimsuit called Fastskin for elite swimming, which mimicked the shark-skin V-shape
ridges [13]. Sharklet is another commercial product inspired by
the overlapping, ridged platelet structures of shark scales. It can
display excellent microbe resistant properties, which is very
encouraging results to date [14,15].
Another well-known example is to design and fabricate biomimetic surface possessing Lotus Effect, which is dened as the
self-cleaning properties (phenomenon) and highly superhydrophobic surface like a lotus leaf [16]. It has been reported that the surface of a lotus leaf is covered with wax and has an intrinsic
microscale and nanoscale hierarchical structures, providing superhydrophobicity, self cleaning, low adhesion and drag reduction
[1719]. Model proposed to interpret superhydrophobic phenomena was published by Cassie and Baxter [20], as well as Wenzel
[21,22]. In the past decades, designing articial superhydrophobic
surfaces has become one of the top issues due to their potential
applications in different realms, and numerous techniques have
been developed to mimic lotus effect, including electrospinning
[23], plasma treatment [24,25], chemical vapor deposition [26],
molding [27] and phase separation [28,29]. However, there is still

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Y. Liu, G. Li / Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 388 (2012) 235242

a long way to go for meeting the requirements for practical

applications.
Based on the understanding of the multi-level structures of
multifunctional biological surfaces, the future research into bioinspired multi-functional surfaces can focus on the combination of
various biomimetic structures by incorporating multiple technologies of forming surface topology so as to make the prepared surface
exhibit excellent comprehensive properties close to the real biological surfaces as far as possible. The articial surfaces inspired
by the shark skin or the lotus leaf have showed unique properties
and broad application prospects. Although the relationship
between the nano- and microscale topographies and the surface
properties of real shark skin and lotus leaf has not been fully
understood, it can be predicted that a biomimetic multi-functional
surface bearing the characteristics of both drag reduction and
anti-bioadhesion may be produced by combining the directional
microscale pattern of shark-skin surface with the nanoscale
structure observed on the lotus leaf. And such a biomimetic surface
can be used to optimize the surface design of underwater vehicles
and uid transportation pipelines, thus enhancing efciency or
reducing energy consumption; and to inhibit bioadhesion to the
surface of underwater facilities in harsh water environments.
Therefore, it is necessary and signicant to develop a new method
for achieving the particular combination of shark skin effect and
lotus effect.
In this work, we developed an original and efcient method to
fabricate superhydrophobic dual-biomimetic surface comprising
both the vivid shark-skin surface morphology and the lotus
leaf-like hierarchical structures. In view of the fact that polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is a malleable material for developing
topographies and its low surface energy is a key property for
achieving a superhydrophobic surface state, PDMS containing
nano-silica was chosen as a substrate material, the biomimetic
shark-skin surface having micron-sized pattern structure was rst
fabricated by microreplication of shark-skin surface; and then, it
was treated by ame to form hierarchical micro/nano-structures
that can produce lotus effect, thereby constructing a dual-biomimetic surface. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to observe the surface morphology of the samples in the form of a PDMS
sheet prepared via different routes, including microreplication,
ame-treatment and microreplication followed by ame-treatment, respectively. Furthermore, their surface properties were
characterized with water contact angle measurements and liquid
drop impact experiments. The results were compared and analyzed
using a at PDMS sheet with a smooth surface as a control sample.
The mechanism of the micromorphology evolution and microstructural changes on the dual-biomimetic surfaces in the process
of ame treatment was also discussed within the paper.

2.2. Fabrication of the surfaces with special micro/nano-structures

2.2.1. Microreplication of shark-skin surface
The microstructure of the shark-skin surface can be replicated
to the surface of PDMS sheet by PDMS replica molding process.
Due to its excellent processability, ease molding, wide spectrum
of physical and mechanical properties, as well as excellent dimensional stability when curing, PDMS elastomer that can be crosslinked via the addition mechanism is chosen as the mold
material to create topographical patterning of micron-scale features. The specic process involves the following steps. First of
all, the treated shark skin was taken out from a refrigerator and left
at room temperature for several hours, and then the shark skin was
carefully tted on a plate as a microreplication template. The plate
with shark skin pattern was made into a mold for casting as shown
in Fig. 1, which was designated as Mold-A. Secondly, a mixture of
precursor and curing agent (10:1 by weight) was poured into
Mold-A and cured for 20 min at 90 C so as to transfer the surface
microstructures of the shark skin to the PDMS surface contacting
with the shark skin; and then the cured PDMS sheet was separated
from Mold-A, thus obtaining the PDMS template for microreplication. The prole of the PDMS template was a counter-shape of the
shark-skin pattern. Thirdly, the as-prepared PDMS template was
used to manufacture a cavity block or negative mold in the same
way as described in the rst step, which was designated as
Mold-B. Through the same microreplication process as the preceding step, the desired shark-skin replica (SSR), PDMS sheet with the
microstructure of shark-skin surface, was fabricated.
2.2.2. Preparation of hierarchical structured surfaces
The prepared shark-skin replica and the at PDMS sheet without microstructure (F-PDMS) were used as substrates. The hierarchical morphological structures on the surfaces of both samples
were prepared via ame treatment. Alcohol lamp was used in the
ame treatment due to its consistent ame suitable for laboratory
preparation. The surface of a substrate was close to the outer edge
of the ame from an alcohol lamp and moved back and forth at a
predetermined speed. After being treated for prescribed time, the
samples were properly preserved for surface characterization and
measurements.
2.3. Surface characterization
2.3.1. Observation of surface morphology
The surface morphology of the prepared PDMS sheets was observed by a scanning electron microscope (S-3700N, Hitachi, Japan)
and a eld emission scanning electron microscope (LEO 1530 VP,
Oberkochem, Germany). The sample surfaces to be observed were
gold-coated using a sputter coater beforehand.

2. Experimental
2.1. Materials
Fresh shark skin from a great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias), which is one of the fastest swimming sharks, was purchased
from a sherman. The subcutaneous fat was removed from fresh
shark skin rst. The shark skin was then washed several times with
deionized water, carefully attened, cut into the required shape
and dried. The treated shark skin was stored in a refrigerator before
use. A two-component room temperature vulcanizable liquid silicone rubber including precursor of PDMS and curing agent, which
were purchased from Zhejiang Runhe Silicone New Material Co.,
Ltd., was used as received. The low viscosity precursor is composed
of vinyl-polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), which contains 25 wt.% of
fumed silica (300 m2/g) ller treated with Si(Me)2-O-oligomers.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the microreplication process of shark-skin surface.

Y. Liu, G. Li / Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 388 (2012) 235242

237

Fig. 2. The SEM images of the shark-skin surface and the surfaces of PDMS sheets prepared via microreplication.

2.3.2. Measurements of contact angle and sliding angle

Contact angle (CA) and sliding angle (SA) were measured with a
Contact Angle Goniometer (DSA 100, Krss GmbH, Germany) at
ambient temperature. Each sample was measured for three times
at three random locations and the average values of contact angle
and sliding angle were calculated.

2.3.3. Liquid drop impact experiment

In order to evaluate the robustness of various superhydrophobic
solid surfaces, a very helpful method is to investigate the liquid
drop impact dynamics onto the surfaces via the water drop impact
experiment.
The experimental procedure generally consists in releasing a
water droplet with a millimeter-level diameter from a microsyringe at different heights to vary its impact velocity onto the solid surface. The falling liquid drops can be accelerated by gravity,
thus hitting the solid surface at a certain impact velocity. The vertical impact velocity of the droplet released at the height h above
the surface, V, can be calculated according to the following
equation:

p
2gh

where g is the acceleration of gravity (g  9.8 m/s2). The physical

parameters of the water droplet are as follows: droplet radius r is
approximately equal to 1.1 mm with 6% deviation, surface tension
r is 0.0728 N/m and density q 1000 kg/m3 at 20 C. The process of
drop impact was recorded by a high-speed camera (pco.dimax
HD, CooKe) with a recording rate of 1500 fps (frames per second)
to obtain the information on the drop impact dynamics.

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Analyses of surface morphology
Fig. 2 illustrates the SEM images of the surfaces of the real shark
skin (Mold-A) and the PDMS sheet samples prepared by the microreplication technique. Compared with the real shark skin in
Fig. 2a, the SSR sample in Fig. 2c possesses the almost same surface
microstructure as that of the dermal denticles on shark skin.
The crosslinking mechanism of additive cure type PDMS is
illustrated in Fig. 3 [30]. It involves the addition of a silicon hydride
(SiH) to an unsaturated double bond in the presence of a noble
metal catalyst such as platinum. Since the Mold-B and SSR are both
made of PDMS, a technical key for preparing the Mold-B is to adjust
the ratio of the PDMS precursor to its curing agent and to control
reaction conditions, so as to make the reactive groups (vinyl groups
or SiH bonds) on the surface of the Mold-B exhausted as far as
possible. When the Mold-B with no reactive groups on its surface
is used to prepare SSR via the microreplication process described
above, the addition curing reaction only occurs within the PDMS
material that makes up SSR and makes SSR exhibit good elasticity,
thus preventing the interface reaction between the Mold-B and the
SSR. For this reason, the SSR can be easily separated from the MoldB with keeping the high-precision surface patterns.
It indicates that the surface morphology of the dermal denticles
on shark skin can be replicated with silicone rubber by the way of
microreplication. In this process the properties of PDMS as a molding material plays an important role. The precursor of PDMS has
excellent owability due to its low viscosity, which makes the precursor ll into the interstice of the mold; and the subsequent crosslinking process can transform the owable precursor into a solid

Fig. 3. The crosslinking mechanism of additive cure type silicone rubber.

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Y. Liu, G. Li / Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 388 (2012) 235242

Fig. 4. (a) The SEM images (shown at four magnications (I)(IV)) of the ame-treated SSR sample and (b) image of a water droplet sitting on the ame-treated SSR surface.

PDMS sheet so as to maintain a conformal contact with the mold

cavity and faithfully replicate its ne structure. The relatively
low surface free energy of PDMS itself (csv = 21.6 dynes/cm2) [31]
and the elasticity, and extremely chemical inertness of the cured
PDMS will enable the prepared PDMS sheet to demold easily.
Therefore, the silicone rubber replica molding process is a low-cost
and reliable way for microstructure replication. The other polymers can also be used in such a microreplication with appropriate
modications.
The further research into the surface morphology of the SSR
samples treated by ame was conducted by SEM. The results are
shown in Fig. 4. It can be seen from the SEM images (I) and (II)
in Fig. 4a that the ne surface proles of the SSR sample can be retained upon treated by ame. Moreover, it is very interesting that
in Fig. 4a, the high-magnication SEM images (III) and (IV) of the
ame-treated SSR surface display a unique hierarchical rough
structure comprising a sub-microstructure and a nano-structure,
in which the uniformly distributive micron-level aggregates
(300500 nm) constitute the sub-microstructure, and this is composed of nano-silica particles (2050 nm). Accordingly, it can be
said that the unique hierarchical micro/nano-structures observed
on the ame-treated SSR surface bear much resemblance to those
of natural lotus leaves. What is consistent with the above observation and analysis is that as shown in Fig. 4b, the ame-treated SSR
surface can exhibit considerable superhydrophobicity, or water on
this surface forms a spherical droplet. These results implies that
the dual-biomimetic surface possessing the surface prole of shark
skin and the hierarchical micro/nano-structures similar to those of
a lotus leaf can be successfully fabricated through the microreplication of shark skin followed by ame treatment.

It should be noted that the duration of ame treatment is an

important factor affecting and controlling the hierarchical micro/
nano-structures of SSR surface. To clarify the effect of ame treatment on the surface morphology of SSR, a few of SSR samples were
treated by ame for different preset time, respectively; and then
the ame-treated surfaces were observed with SEM. The SEM
images are presented in Fig. 5.
It can be clearly observed from Fig. 5 that the surface morphology and roughness of the used SSR samples change dramatically as
the ame-treatment time increases. On the untreated surface there
is no discernable feature. Once the surface is treated by ame for
510 s, some relatively regular and discrete embossment-like
wrinkled surface structures along different directions begin to
appear as shown in Fig. 5b and c; and the number of the regular
wrinkled surface structures on the treated surface increases with
an extension of the ame-treatment time. However, on the surface
treated by ame for 30 s the ridges and troughs of the wrinkled
surface structures disappear instead of a uniformly rough micro/
nano-structures as shown in Fig. 5d.
The mechanism of the above-described micromorphology evolution and microstructural changes can be explained according to
the principle of ame treatment and the analysis of the change
in the physical properties of surface material during this process.
Due to the action of the heat from ame, the ame treatment of
surface conducted in air will lead to the surface oxidation of treated object in essence, especially for the surface of organic material.
On the other hand, there may exist the thermal stress of surface
generated by the non-uniform heating in the initial stage of ame
treatment. Based on this principle, it can be speculated that while
the surface of PDMS sheet is subjected to ame treatment, the ef-

Y. Liu, G. Li / Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 388 (2012) 235242

239

Fig. 5. The comparison of the SEM images of the SSR surfaces treated by ame for [(a) and (b)] 0 s; [(c) and (d)] 10 s; [(e) and (f)] 20 s; and [(g) and (h)] 30 s, respectively.

fect of the surface thermal stress and the oxidative activation of

ame will induce the micro-deformation of the surface layer;
and simultaneously, the non-uniform heating in the initial stage
of ame treatment makes the polysiloxane located in the hightemperature region of the surface layer break down and partially
degrade into inorganic SiO2 networks. Consequently, the relatively
regular embossment-like wrinkled structures form on the surface
of PDMS sheet. With the continuance of the ame treatment, the
hydrophobic nano-silica particles previously embedded in the
PDMS matrix are gradually exposed to generate ower-like nanoscale aggregates made from nano-silica. Finally, a uniformly rough
surface possessing the unique hierarchical micro/nano-structures
forms with increasing nano-silica aggregates on the sample
surface.
3.2. Wettability of various surfaces
It has been found that the surface wettability or hydrophobicity
strongly depends on its topology besides its chemical nature. Thus,
the water CA values of the different microstructured surfaces of
PDMS sheets were measured to evaluate their hydrophobicity.
The tested PDMS sheet samples included (a) F-PDMS sample with
smooth surface, (b) SSR sample with vivid shark-skin morphology,

(c) the ame-treated F-PDMS sample with nano-structured

surface, and (d) the ame-treated SSR sample with a hierarchical
micro/nano-structured surface. The results are illustrated in
Fig. 6 and the data on the water contact angle and sliding angle
on the various surfaces are summarized in Table 1. The CA on
the smooth surface of F-PDMS as a control sample is 103
(Fig. 6a), showing the hydrophobicity of PDMS as a low-surface-energy material. Compared to it, various microstructures fabricated
on the sample surface can make the CA increase signicantly, as
shown in Fig. 6bd. On the microstructured surface of SSR, the
CA is 120, which indicates that the SSR surface possesses stronger
hydrophobicity than F-PDMS surface, but it is still not superhydrophobic. However, on the nano-structured surface of the ame-treated F-PDMS sample and the hierarchical micro/nano-structured
surface of the ame-treated SSR sample, the measured CA values
reach 153 and 160, respectively. In other words, the CA of both
the surfaces increases by 50 and 40, respectively, as compared
with that on the untreated surface of the corresponding sample.
This implies that the surfaces of both samples (c) and (d) are
superhydrophobic and the reason for it is that on the surfaces there
form the hierarchical micro/nano-structures produced by ame
treatment. And according to the experimental observation, the
water droplet on the superhydrophobic surfaces is unstable and

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Y. Liu, G. Li / Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 388 (2012) 235242

Fig. 6. The CA of water droplet on the surfaces of PDMS sheets fabricated via different routes and the corresponding schematic diagrams.

Table 1
Water contact angle and sliding angle measured on the various surfaces.
Sample

CA ()

SA

F-PDMS
SSR
The ame-treated F-PDMS
The ame-treated SSR

103
120
153
160

90
Stick to the surface
<1
<1

can roll back and forth with no visible distortion, exhibiting ultralow adhesion to the superhydrophobic surfaces.
In addition, as shown in Table 1, the water droplet on the FPDMS surface does not move when the slide angle is smaller than
90; and the water droplet on the SSR surface can stick to it even
though the surface is turned upside down. However, the SA for
water droplet on the superhydrophobic surfaces having nanostructures or hierarchical micro/nano-structures merely reaches a
limiting value of 1. This result suggests that the lotus leaf-like
hierarchical structured surfaces can be created through a simple
ame treatment on the biomimetic shark-skin surface made of
polymeric materials. And what is more important, just 20 s of
ame treatment on the biomimetic shark-skin surface can make
it exhibit superhydrophobicity.
The high contact angles on the hierarchical structured surface
can be easily interpreted by the Cassies theory [20] which has
been widely used to study liquid drops in contact with microstructured surfaces. Two different wetting states can be observed on
microstructured surfaces: (i) Wenzel state: the liquid droplet retains contact at all points with the solid surface below it and (ii)
Cassie state: the liquid drop sits on the highest parts of the rough
solid with trapped air underneath. The prepared dual-biomimetic
surface possessing both the vivid shark-skin surface morphology
and the lotus leaf-like hierarchical micro/nano-structures in this
work can be considered as a typical airsolid composite surface,
and the wetting behavior can be determined using the following
Eq. (2) derived by Cassie and Baxter [20]:

cos h fS cos hS  fG

contact the very top of the surface and does not penetrate the interspaces among the microstructures. These results indicate that the
surface morphology plays an important role in the formation of a
superhydrophobic surface.
To investigate the durability of the biomimetic superhydrophobic surface, the ame-treated SSR sample with superhydrophobicity was either immersed in water for 2 month or continuously
exposed to the water ow from the laboratory faucet at 1.0 m/s
for 2 h and then the contact angle was measured. The test results
show that the sample surface still maintains almost the same
hydrophobicity. That is to say, there is little damage of the hierarchical structures on the surface and the dual-biomimetic surface
can exhibit excellent long-term stability. The reason for it is partly
due to the strong bonding of nano-silica particles with the PDMS
substrate.
3.3. Liquid drop impact on various surfaces
From the energy considerations [3335] for both the wetting
states, Wenzel state and Cassie state, the former is stable and the
latter is metastable. It means that the water droplet will remain
in Cassie state only if it is not subjected to external disturbances.
There exists a free-energy barrier DG for the transition from the
metastable Cassie state to the stable Wenzel state, as shown in
Fig. 7 [36,37]. So it is quite necessary to consider this transition
when the superhydrophobic surface possessing special surface

where h is the apparent contact angle on the rough surface (160), hS

is the intrinsic contact angle on the smooth surface of an original FPDMS as a control sample (103), fS is the total liquid/solid contact
area divided by the projected area, and fG is the total liquid/vapor
contact area divided by the projected area (i.e., fS + fG P 1) [32]. It
is easy to deduce from Eq. (2) that increasing the value of fG, that
is, the larger fraction of air on the surface, will lead to the increase
of h. The rough structure on the surface can give the comparatively
strong ability to trap large fraction of air within the interstices of
the microstructures so that the water droplets are inclined to

Fig. 7. Schematic view of the free-energy barrier DG separating the Wenzel and
Cassie state.

Y. Liu, G. Li / Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 388 (2012) 235242

topology is applied to practical dynamic water environment. The

transition making a non-stick droplet sticky contradicts what we
expect from a superhydrophobic surface. As the Wenzel state
may not be suitable for many industrial applications involving drag
reduction or self-cleaning, it is of great importance to predict the
transition between Cassie and Wenzel state.
The transition between different wetting states on the solid surface can be evaluated by analyzing the dynamic responses during
the liquid drop impact, which is inuenced by several parameters
such as droplet size and impact velocity. These effects can be described in terms of dimensionless number, the Weber number
We [38,39], which is dened as the ratio of kinetic energy to surface energy, characterizing the deformability of the droplet. The
Weber number We can be calculated using the following equation:

We

qV 2 r
r

here r is the radius of the liquid drop, V is the impact velocity, q is

the liquid density, and r is the surface tension. Obviously, the

241

Weber number, We, can be altered or adjusted by simply changing

the impact velocity of the liquid drop, V, for the given liquid. In this
work, water was used in liquid drop impact experiment.
To gure out how the impact velocity inuences the transition
from the composite solidairliquid interface to the homogeneous
solidliquid interface during the water droplet impact, we performed bouncing droplet experiments on various surfaces by
releasing droplets at different heights. Fig. 8 shows the snapshots
of water droplet with 1.1 mm radius on various surfaces at different time intervals, including the smooth surface of F-PDMS, the
microstructured surface of a SSR sample and the hierarchical micro/nano-structured surface of the ame-treated SSR sample.
As observed from snapshots in Fig. 8, the water droplet impacting upon the F-PDMS surface and the SSR surface do not bounce off
even though the impact velocity applied is up to 0.9 m/s, which
means that the wetting states on the smooth PDMS surface and
the microstructured surface similar to shark skin are in the Wenzel
state. It is different in the case of the hierarchical micro/nanostructured surface exhibiting superhydrophobicity. Upon falling

Fig. 8. The snapshots of a droplet with 1.1 mm radius hitting various surfaces.

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Y. Liu, G. Li / Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 388 (2012) 235242

on the hierarchical micro/nano-structured ame-treated SSR surface at the impact velocity of 0.5 m/s and 0.9 m/s, respectively,
whose corresponding Weber numbers are 3.8 and 12.2, respectively, the water droplet rst deforms followed by spreading and
retracting, and nally rebounds off the surface within 10.98 ms
and 10.54 ms. The Cassie model is usually used to explain this phenomenon. In the Cassie model, air can be trapped underneath the
droplet and in the interstices of the microstructures, so that the
droplet bounces off and cannot wet the surface.
However, when the impact velocity reaches 1.5 m/s or the corresponding Weber number is 34.0, the droplet rst deforms, then
develops outward to form water ring with wavy bumps, and
eventually merges together at the center to form an elongating
water fountain. The bottom of the elongated droplet irreversibly
adheres to the solid surface, which cause the droplet not to bounce
off completely and just to be pinned on the partly wetted surface
with maintaining small contact area after 3000 ms. The abovementioned results indicate that a transition from the composite
interface to the homogenous interface can occur as the kinetic energy overcomes the surface energy and the liquid surface tension.
For the ame-treated SSR sample, if the Weber number that depends on the features, size and impact velocity of liquid droplet
reaches 34 or high, the Cassie state is broken and the droplet turns
to the wetting Wenzel state, in which it is pinned on the surface.
4. Conclusion
A brand new method was successfully developed using PDMS
containing nano-silica as a substrate for producing a dual-biomimetic surface structure comprising both the shark-skin surface
morphology and the lotus leaf-like hierarchical micro/nano-structures. It involves the PDMS microreplication processes using shark
skin as a template and the subsequent ame treatment. The SEM
observations show that the biomimetic shark-skin surface fabricated by the way of microreplication possesses vivid shark-skin
surface morphology, or micron-sized shark-skin pattern structure;
and the subsequent ame treatment makes it possess hierarchical
micro/nano-structures with no damaging its shark-skin pattern
structure, thereby constructing the dual-biomimetic surface as expected. The duration of ame treatment is an important factor
affecting and controlling the hierarchical micro/nano-structures
of the treated surface. The dual-biomimetic surface or the ametreated biomimetic shark-skin surface exhibits excellent superhydrophobicity with a low SA. Its CA reaches 160, which increases
by 40 as compared with that of the untreated biomimetic sharkskin surface. This implies that the ame treatment producing hierarchical micro/nano-structures on PDMS surfaces is a key process
to fabricate superhydrophobic surface. According to the results of
liquid drop experiment and their analyses, the robustness of the
dual-biomimetic superhydrophobic surface is conrmed and the
transition from the Cassie state to the Wenzel state arises and
the phenomenon of pining a droplet on the surface occurs when
the impact velocity exceeds a threshold velocity (V  1.5 m/s), at
which the corresponding Weber number We reaches 34.0.
Summarily, the novel method developed in this study can not
only fabricate a superhydrophobic dual-biomimetic surface as expected, but also is characterized by simplicity, high efciency and
low cost. What is more signicant, combined with the other techniques for fabricating biomimetic surfaces, it is expected to be

developed into a novel and feasible biomimetic surface manufacturing technique, that can create multifunctional biomimetic
structured surfaces providing a better performance on self-cleaning, antifouling, drag reduction, antireection, and so forth, thereby
satisfying the requirements for practical applications in different
elds. The further study on the drag reduction and anti-bioadhesion of the fabricated dual-biomimetic surface is in progress and
will be reported in our future papers.
Acknowledgments
This work was nancially supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (NSFC, Grant No. 50873039) and the
Foundation of Key Laboratory of Surface Functional Structure Manufacturing of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, South China
University of Technology (SFS-KF201011). The authors would like
to thank Peng Xinyan, Su Dong, and Li Shuai of South China University of Technology. The authors also grateful acknowledge Mr. Wu
Chaomao and his fellow workers from Yuan Ao International Trade
Co., Ltd. (Hongkong) for the friendly supply of the high-speed
camera.
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