Laser surface modification is an effective method for fabrication of superwetting surfaces, which has attracted extensive attention due to its high precision, non-contact characteristic with materials, excellent controllability and minimized pollution to the environment. However, most of the current laser surface modification methods exhibit disadvantages including low processing efficiency and high production cost. Some laser-based methods require the usage of toxic fluorine-containing reagents for wettability control, which has limited the application in biomedicine industries. Therefore, development of facile and environmental-friendly laser-based method for preparation of superwetting surface is conducive to the practical application of the surface engineering community. In this work, a nanosecond laser-silicone oil-heat treatment (LSH) composite process was developed to fabricate superwetting surfaces on various non-metallic materials (zirconia ceramic, silicon carbide and glass) with enhanced surface functionalities. Nanosecond laser texturing was firstly applied to fabricate periodic micro/nanostructures on non-metallic materials, and silicone oil-assisted heat treatment was utilized to change surface chemistry for wettability control. The surface physicochemical properties of the LSH surface were evaluated by diverse characterization techniques including SEM, CLSM, EDS and XPS, and the corresponding applications of the LSH surface were demonstrated. The developed LSH technique could achieve the wettability transition from superhydrophilicity to superhydrophobicity on the non-metallic materials within only 5~10 minutes using the silicone oil-assisted heat treatment method while maintaining the processing efficiency of laser surface texturing, and thus the fabrication efficiency of superwetting surfaces was significantly increased by the LSH process. In the meantime, the silicone oil used in this work is non-toxic, and thus the innovative LSH process could provide a key avenue for the applications of superwetting surface in diverse engineering fields including aerospace and biomedicine industries.
 

Non-metallic materials,superwetting surface,laser-based fabrication,physicochemical properties