10 1039@C8NR09747J
10 1039@C8NR09747J
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Nanoscale
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This article can be cited before page numbers have been issued, to do this please use: H. Wu, Y. Jiao, C.
Zhang, C. Chen, L. Yang, J. Li, J. Ni, Y. Zhang, C. Li, Y. Zhang, S. Jiang, S. Zhu, Y. Hu, D. Wu and J. Chu,
Nanoscale, 2019, DOI: 10.1039/C8NR09747J.
Volume 8 Number 1 7 January 2016 Pages 1–660 This is an Accepted Manuscript, which has been through the
Royal Society of Chemistry peer review process and has been
accepted for publication.
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Page 1 of 24 Nanoscale
Hao Wu,a Yunlong Jiao,a Chenchu Zhang,b Chao Chen,a Liang Yang,a Jiawen Li,a,*
China
Artificial bioinspired surfaces are attracting more and more attentions because of their
with controlled anisotropy using a simple, inexpensive and efficient method remains
method, which has sufficient energy density and high processing efficiency to directly
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fabricate the groove structures on metal surface. The surface shows multicolor due to
diffraction grating effect of the regular grooves structures, and anisotropic wetting due
diversity of colors and the anisotropic wetting under different heights and periods of
grooves have been quantitatively investigated. A variety of patterns (e.g., leaf, crab,
windmill, letter and so on) can be processed on various metals (e.g., stainless steel, Ti,
Ni, Cu, Fe, Zn and so on) by this focused laser interference lithography because of its
excellent flexibility and wide range of material suitability. This multifunctional metal
unusual physical and chemical properties, which can be utilized for biological
cells,5 and so on. Among the above, two typical properties of bioinspired surface are
wings or bird feathers and the anisotropic wetting is inspired by rice leaf, trionum
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flower, duck feather, or shark skin.6-12 These two fascinating functions are all derived
Wang et al. used femtosecond laser to print nanovoids on metal films, which can
reproduce different pure colors based on plasmonic coloration.13 Xiao et al. reported a
(LIPSS), which are colorful due to grating effect. 15 By multiple exposure of two
beam laser interference with angle variation and period modulation, Abid et al.
realized three levels of biomimetic hierarchical structures with structural color and
rice leaf.18 Liu et al. adopted femtosecond laser single-point scanning to realize big
grooves (~50 µm) with anisotropic wetting on copper surface.19 However, these
fabrication processes are multistep complex or one-step but low efficiency (single
point scanning). Some of the fabricated microstructures are irregular due to its
simultaneously on hard materials, such as the metal which has broader application
than polymer using a simple, inexpensive and efficient method. Laser interference
lithography (LIL) has been used for decades and constantly improved as one of the
most powerful yet relatively inexpensive method for creating large-area patterns
interference beams, light intensity, phase of the laser, incident angle, polarization, etc.,
1D, 2D, and even 3D periodic structures can be obtained. Nevertheless, the processing
materials of the LIL in the existing reports are almost based on soft material such as
polymer.
which has sufficient energy density to directly fabricate the groove structures on
center of processed metal surface when incident white light angle was fixed. We also
Page 5 of 24 Nanoscale
different periods and heights. It was found that the anisotropic wetting strongly
depended on the height, and weakly on the period when the period was about the
Figure 1a illustrates the experimental setup for different grooves on the mirror
polished 316L stainless steel surface by the focused two-beam laser interference
lithography. After laser beam expansion, the output laser spot was shaped into the 1×1
cm2 square by a square aperture. Then the laser was split into two beams which had
the same energy. In order to get enough energy density to process stainless steel
surface, two beams were converged into the 1×1 mm2 squares by two convex lenses.
By adjusting the optical path length strictly, they were overlapped on the sample both
temporally and spatially to form a periodic light intensity pattern by the interference.
As the light intensity distribution simulation (Figure 1b) shows, the periodic light
intensity pattern is composed of stripes with the light intensity changing continuously
from 0 to 4 I0 (I0 is defined as the light intensity of each beam). The stripes period
ds=λ / (2 sin θ) is determined by the incident angle θ and the laser wavelength λ.
Given θ=7.04°, the theoretical stripe period ds is 1.45 µm. Judging from the top view
Nanoscale Page 6 of 24
SEM image (Figure 1c), the period dg of grooves on the processed sample DOI: 10.1039/C8NR09747J
is about
1.46 ± 0.01 µm, which is consistent with theoretical stripes period ds. Due to the strict
uniformity of the light intensity distribution caused by the interference, the grooves
generated in the single exposure region are more uniform and continuous than that by
LIPSS.15,23 As shown in AFM image (Figure 1d), the height of grooves is sub-200 nm
the formation process of grooves on the stainless steel surface. During laser
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irradiation, the laser-induced plasma was expanded to produce the shock wave, high
temperature and high pressure at the interface.22 The stainless steel surface was
melted, and the higher the light intensity was, the deeper the melting occurred. Under
the synergetic effect of shock wave and debris deposition, the grooves with sinusoidal
The characteristics (e.g., period, height) of grooves on the stainless steel surface can
be regulated by changing the processing parameters. Four kinds of period 0.62, 0.92,
1.16, and 1.45 µm were obtained under θ=16.67°, 11.10°, 8.83°, and 7.04°,
grooves, as one of the most important parameters of grooves, was studied in detail.
Figure 2d shows the relationship between groove height and laser fluence, with the
100 laser shots and the groove period of 1.45 µm. The laser fluence was 0.215, 0.335,
and 0.404 J/cm2 to form the groove heights of 29.96 nm (Figure 2a), 74.64 nm (Figure
Page 7 of 24 Nanoscale
2b), and 128.20 nm (Figure 2c), respectively. The larger the laser fluenceDOI:is,10.1039/C8NR09747J
the
higher the groove is. Too small laser fluence will lead to the irregular grooves (Figure
2a). If the laser fluence increases, the thickness of the molten metal will be greater
and more debris will deposit so that the groove height increases. Figure 2h shows the
relationship between groove height and number of laser shots, with the laser fluence
(Figure 2e), 80.20 nm (Figure 2f), and 193.39 nm (Figure 2g) were obtained under the
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30, 70, and 130 laser shots, respectively. It is obvious that the effect of less number of
laser shots on the irregular groove morphology (Figure 2e) is similar to the
insufficient laser fluence. Too large laser fluence (>0.45 J/cm2) or number of laser
shots (>140) will lead to bad groove morphology while the groove height will keep
constant (~200 nm). Hence, by adjusting the incident angle θ, the laser fluence, and
the number of laser shots, controllable grooves with different periods and heights can
Although the sample with micro/nano grooves was obtained, the area of single
processing was only 1×1 mm2, which seems small in some particular applications. A
two-dimensional translation precision stage was used to move the sample to splice the
single processing area into multiple large patterns. Larger surface (e.g., 6.5×7 cm2)
can be obtained through the combination of the control of the shutter and the
efficiency of this interference method, a full filled 2×2 cm2 square can be realized in
400 seconds, which is much faster than the single point femtosecond laser scanning
Nanoscale Page 8 of 24
methods (such as LIPSS, 1000 seconds).23 However, the edges of patterns areDOI: 10.1039/C8NR09747J
usually
jagged as the minimum exposed area is 1 mm2. To get smooth edges, a mask
matching the pattern can be used. In this way, large-area patterns (~50 cm2) with high
The grooves have similar optical properties to diffraction gratings due to its periodic
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structures. When the white light irradiates the grooves, the incident light is divided
into spectra with different wavelengths. The spectra are reflected differently due to its
structural colors can be observed at different observation angles when the sample is
irradiated by the white light. Figure 3a shows schematic illustration of measuring the
optical properties of micro/nano grooves on the stainless steel surface. The sample
was irradiated vertically by the white light from a LED lamp. A digital optical camera
which could move in the plane vertical to the groove direction was used to capture the
reflected light at different angles. The angle between the digital optical camera and
the Z-axis is defined as the observation angle α. In order to facilitate the study of the
relationship between structural color and observation angle α, groove structural model
is simplified and grooves are regarded as rectangular reflection grating. Based on the
model, a diffraction equation is deduced from the theoretical analysis to reveal the
ranging from 400 nm to 700 nm, which almost covers visible color spectrum. d is the
period of the grooves (1450 nm). β is the angle between the white light and the Z-axis.
γ is the angle between the groove direction and the X-axis. In the experimental setup,
both angle β and angle γ are designed to be 0 to reduce the difficulty of measurement
the grating can be selected. To simplify the analysis, we ignored partial third-order
observed light at different α angles and the corresponding color, when n=1, 2,
respectively. The experimental results agree well with the theoretical calculation
curves. Figure 3c-i and Figure 3j-p show seven representative colors of visible light
and corresponding α angles, when n=1, 2, respectively. Due to the large size of the
sample (6.5×7 cm2), when the position of the optical camera is fixed, the observation
angles of the edge region and the central region of the sample are different, and this
leads to a variety of structural colors that can be seen at a certain α angle. Therefore,
the central region of the sample is chosen as the object for studying the structural
color in the experiment. For example, in Figure 3f when the observation angle α is
45.0°, the structural color at the center of the sample is green. According to the curves
in Figure 3b, the wavelength of light detected by the optical camera should be 512.7
nm, which means the color is green at this observation angle. The actual observed
structural color is consistent with the theoretical calculation. What’s more, comparing
Nanoscale Page 10 of 24
Figure 3c-i with Figure 3j-p, it can be clearly observed that the structural DOI:
color10.1039/C8NR09747J
in
Figure 3j-p is brighter, which is caused by the higher diffraction efficiency of the
first-order than that of the second-order. In addition, it should be noted that the
existence of the observation angle causes the rectangular sample to look trapezoidal in
Figure 3c-p. Figure 3q shows some other patterns (e.g., leaf, crab, windmill and so on)
flexibility.
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grooves is the controlled anisotropic wetting. As the sketch in Figure 4a, the water
droplet tends to flow parallel to the groove direction because it requires to overcome a
much higher energy barrier to flow vertical than parallel to the groove direction.
Hence, when a series of different size droplets were dropped on the sample, they were
all oval and elongated in parallel with the direction of the groove (Figure 4b). θ1 and
θ2 were defined as the contact angles vertical and parallel to the groove direction,
By adjusting the laser fluence and number of laser shots, the height of the grooves
was set to ~200 nm, and four periods 0.62, 0.92, 1.16, 1.45 µm was obtained under
θ=16.67°, 11.10°, 8.83°, and 7.04°, respectively. The Δθ angles of these four periods
are all around 6°, which means no obvious difference in anisotropic wetting behaviors.
The reason may be that the changes in the groove period are horizontal, and the
Page 11 of 24 Nanoscale
it is less than 2 µm, which is in consistent with the results reported by Mortia et al.25
By setting the incident angle θ to 7.04°, the period of the grooves was
to 200 nm was obtained under different number of laser shots. As shown in Figure 4c,
2.0°, while the angle θ2 remains ~80°. This causes the angle Δθ to change from 3.1° to
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6.1°, which means the anisotropic wetting increases as the groove height increases.
Namely, by changing the groove height, the degree of the anisotropy of the metal
surface hydroxyl groups decreased, which leaded to the hydrophobicity increase after
and the angle θ1 and angle θ2 were measured again (Figure 4d). After surface
modification, angle θ2 increases, but still does not change significantly as the groove
height increases, maintaining at ~99°. Angle θ1 also increases and the anisotropy still
exists, for example, the θ1 changes from 86.9 ± 2.0° to 113.0 ± 2.1° for 193.40 nm
height and Δθ is 12°. After PFDTES modification, the metal surface is more
Not only stainless steel surface, this focused interference lithography systemDOI:
can 10.1039/C8NR09747J
be
used to process a wide range of metal materials. Figure 5 shows the structural colors
and anisotropic wetting of five other processed metal surfaces (Ti, Ni, Cu, Fe and Zn)
under the incident angle θ of 7.04°, the 150 laser shots and the laser fluence of 0.235
J/cm2. As shown in Figure 5f, starting from 0 J/cm2, increasing the laser fluence by
and then observing the damage of the metal surface with an optical microscope, we
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obtained the minimum laser fluence at the beginning of ablation of different metals.
Among the five metals, the ablation threshold of copper is the highest (0.275 ± 0.003
J/cm2). In addition, five metal surfaces were also processed under the same irradiance
(0.235 J/cm2, 150), the height of the grooves changes from 26.20 ± 3.73 nm to 63.60
± 4.29 nm depending on the type of the metal (Figure 5g). The height of the grooves
on the copper surface is the smallest, so the structural color is the dimmest (Figure 5c)
and the anisotropy is also minimal (Δθ=1.6°). Comparing Figure 5f with Figure 5g, it
is noteworthy that they are corresponding and the high ablation threshold means the
small groove height at the same irradiance. The difference in height is probably
absorption of the laser and so on. It is obvious that the structural colors in Figure 5a-e
are not uniform, mainly due to the ununiformity of laser spot and step of splicing the
3. Conclusion
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groove structures on various metal surfaces (e.g., stainless steel, Ti, Ni, Cu, Fe, Zn
and so on), which exhibit both of dazzling structural colors and anisotropic wetting. The
grooves have similar optical properties to diffraction gratings, so enhanced colors can
be formed when the metal surface is irradiated by the white light. Compared to some
efficiency and structure uniformity. Moreover, the structural color and anisotropic
wetting behaviors have been quantitatively investigated, such as, the influence of
observation angle on the diversity of structural colors and the anisotropic wetting
under different heights and periods of grooves. The results show that the anisotropic
wetting mainly depends on the height when the period is several micrometers. Based
the height of the grooves. These properties of the multifunctional metal surface make
so on.
4. Experimental Section
Materials: Mirror polished 316L stainless steel, titanium, nickel, copper, iron and zinc
with the thickness of 1mm were purchased from New Metal Material Tech. Co., Ltd,
Focused Laser Interference Lithography: The irradiance light source of focused laser
for shaping the output laser spot was a homemade one with the maximum light
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Tokyo, Japan). Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) worked in contact mode to measure
the heights of grooves (MFP-3D-Origin, Oxford Instruments plc, Abingdon, UK). The
(Shanghai Innuo precision instruments Co., Ltd., China). By measuring five drops at
different locations on the same surface at ambient temperature, the average contact
by the white light from a customized LED lamp with the wavelength ranging from
400 nm to 700 nm. We built a rotating bracket so the digital optical camera
to the groove direction and capture the reflected light at different angles. In order to
Page 15 of 24 Nanoscale
Surface Modification: After focused laser interference lithography, the sample was
hours. And then, the modified sample was dried on a hot plate at the temperature of
Conflicts of interest
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China
Statement of contributions
D.W and J.W.L participated in the design of this study, and they both performed the
Nanoscale Page 16 of 24
manuscript. C.C. and S.W.Z. analyzed the XPS data in supplementary information.
C.C.Z, L.Y and J.C.N carried out literature search, C.Z.L, Y.Y.Z and S.J.J carried out
manuscript editing, Y.C.Z, Y.L.H and J.R.C performed manuscript review. The
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11 L. Feng, S. Li, Y. Li, H. Li, L. Zhang, J. Zhai, Y. Song, B. Liu, L. Jiang, D. Zhu,
16 M. I. Abid, L. Wang, Q.-D. Chen, X.-W. Wang, S. Juodkazis and H.-B. Sun,
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A 2014, 2, 5499.
19 Y. Liu, S. Li, S. Niu, X. Cao, Z. Han, L. Ren, Appl. Surf. Sci. 2016, 379, 230.
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23 G. Li, J. Li, Y. Hu, C. Zhang, X. Li, J. Chu and W. Huang, Appl. Surf. Sci. 2014,
316, 451-455.
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27 J. Long, M. Zhong, H. Zhang and P. Fan, J Colloid Interface Sci, 2015, 441, 1-9.
on the stainless steel surface. (a) Schematic diagram of focused two-beam interference
distribution (20×20 µm2). (c) SEM image of grooves on the stainless steel surface. (d)
AFM image of grooves on the stainless steel surface (20×20 µm2). (e) Mechanism of
laser shock wave and debris deposition process which causes the formation of
grooves.
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Figure 2. The relationship between groove height and laser fluence or number of laser
shots. (a-c) AFM images and height curves of grooves when laser fluence is 0.215,
0.335, 0.404 J/cm2, respectively. (d) The curve of the relationship between groove
height and laser fluence. (e-g) AFM images and height curves of grooves when
number of laser shots is 30, 70, 130, respectively. (h) The curve of the relationship
Figure 3. Experimental setup for measuring the optical properties. (a) Schematic
diagram of the way to characterize different structural colors of the stainless steel
surface in different observation angles. (b) The theoretical curves and experimental
points of the relationship between sample center color and observation angle α when
center displayed with different α angles. (q) Multi-patterns displayed with structural
colors, such as leaf, crab, windmill and so on. Scale bars are 1 cm in (c-p), 5 mm in
(q).
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energy barriers in the directions vertical and parallel to the groove direction. (b) Oval
water droplets on the stainless steel surface caused by anisotropic wetting. White
arrow reveals the direction of the grooves. (c-d) The strongly dependence between the
anisotropy and groove height. θ1 and θ2 were defined as the contact angles vertical
and parallel to the groove direction, respectively. The stainless steel surfaces in (d)
surfaces. (a-e) Multi-patterns displayed with structural colors on different metals (Ti,
Ni, Cu, Fe and Zn) at the same observation angle α. (f) The minimum single laser
fluence of ablation threshold for different metals under 50 laser shots. (g) The groove
height on different metals and the corresponding contact angles θ1 and θ2 under the
incident angle θ of 7.04°, 150 laser shots and the laser fluence of 0.235 J/cm2. Scale
Direct processing of different metal surfaces with structural color and anisotropy
wetting using focused laser interference lithography