Creating Long-Lived Superhydrophobic Polymer Surfaces Through Mechanically Assembled Monolayers

We show that elastomeric surfaces can be tailored using "mechanically assembled monolayers" (MAMs), structures that are fabricated by combining self-assembly of surface grafting molecules with mechanical manipulation of the grafting points in the underlying elastic surface. The versatility of this surface modification method is demonstrated by fabricating MAMs with semifluorinated (SF) molecules. These SF-MAMs have superior nonwetting and barrier properties in that they are "superhydrophobic" and nonpermeable. We also establish that these material characteristics do not deteriorate even after prolonged exposure to water, which usually causes surface reconstruction in conventionally prepared SF self-assembled monolayers.