• ^a State Key Laboratory of Solid Lubrication, Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
• ^b Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
• ^c Hubei Collaborative Innovation Centre for Advanced Organic Chemical Materials and Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory for the Green Preparation and Application of Functional Materials, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to characterize the microrelief and wettability of lotus leaf, waterlily leaf and biomimic ZnO surface with potential engineering applications. The characterizations of morphologies reveal that the top surface of lotus leaf is textured with 4 μm – 10 μm size protrusions and 70 nm – 100 nm nanorods, while the top surface of waterlily leaf is textured with wrinkle and decorated with concave coin-shaped geometric structure. The wettabilities of water and oil on lotus leaf and waterlily leaf under different surroundings were systematically researched. It is indeed interesting that the leaves of the two typical plants both living in the aquatic habitats possess opposite wettabilities: superhydrophobicity for top surface of lotus leaf (156°) while quasi-superhydrophilicity for top surface of waterlily leaf (15°). We have succeeded in fabricating the superhydrophobic ZnO nanorods semiconductor material (151°) employing a simple method inspired by the detailed structures and chemical composition of lotus leaf.