A patent abstract reproduced in the source dossier on superhydrophobic metallic tubes. It is the inverse-wetting counterpart to the superhydrophobic surface patents in the same dossier.
Claimed subject matter (as summarized in the dossier)
- Methods involving creating one or more indentations in the surface of the material.
- The indentations have a micro-rough surface of protrusions, cavities, spheres, rods, or other irregularly shaped features having heights and/or widths on the order of 0.5 to 100 microns.
- The micro-rough surface has a nano-rough surface of protrusions, cavities, spheres, rods, and other irregularly shaped features having heights and/or widths on the order of 1 to 500 nanometers.
- Superwicking and/or superwetting materials having micro-rough and nano-rough surface indentations are claimed, including metals, glass, enamel, polymers, semiconductors, and others.
Relationship to the tube work
This patent claims superwicking/superwetting (superhydrophilic) behavior — the opposite of the water-repelling behavior used in the floating tubes. The dossier presents it alongside the superhydrophobic patents as part of the same laboratory's surface-structuring toolkit, without stating how the two relate to the tube result. See US2019319152A1 — Super-Hydrophobic Surfaces and Methods for Producing Super-Hydrophobic Surfaces and Hierarchical Micro/Nanoscale Surface Texturing.
Source notes & attribution
- https://rexresearch.com/GouSuperhydrophobicMetal/GuoSuperhydrophobicMetallicTubes.html