Study on the Biomimetic Structure of Aluminum Alloy Surface Fabricated by Laser and Its Hydrophobic and Water-collecting Properties

Abstract

At present, water shortage has become a difficult problem and hot spot that needs to be solved in the current society. In this paper, the processing method of laser and heat treatment is used to prepare the microstructure of imitation bottle grass on the surface of 7075 aluminum alloy. Under the premise of no chemical modification, the surface of the sample is made superhydrophobic, and the contact angle reaches more than 150°. At the same time, based on the special high and low rib structure of bottle grass, combined with the principle of contact line pinning and the classical nucleation theory, the bionic surface exhibits excellent water-collecting performance. After the water collection experiment test, it was found that the water collection amount of the prepared samples measured in the atmospheric environment was 7.40 times higher than that of the polished surface. Finally, the contribution of the hydrophobicity of the biomimetic surface to the water-harvesting ability is analyzed.