Biomimetic lubricant-infused titania nanoparticle surfaces via layer-by-layer deposition to control biofouling

Lubricant-infused surfaces have attracted a lot of attention in antifouling applications. Previously, lubricant-infused surfaces fabricated by a layer-by-layer process involved two or more polyelectrolytes and needed post-treatments to generate pores. Here, the paper proposes a layer-by-layer sol-gel process to prepare a lubricant-infused surface. This process only involves a single material and without any post-treatment. The nanostructured titania layers were layer-by-layer assembled onto 316L stainless steel substrates by immersing the substrates into a titanium (IV) butoxide ethanol solution. The titania layers were subsequently surface-functionalized by fluorinated silanes and infiltrated with fluorinated lubricant to form lubricant-infused nanoparticle surfaces. The physicochemical properties of the lubricant-infused nanoparticle surfaces dominated the antifouling performance. These results give some insight into the construction of lubricant-infused nanoparticle surfaces with desirable liquid repellency and antifouling properties via a layer-by-layer sol-gel process.