Metal Surface Engineering for Extreme Sustenance of Jumping Droplet Condensation.

Water vapor condensation on metallic surfaces is critical to a broad range of applications, ranging from power generation to the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Enhancing simultaneously the heat transfer efficiency, scalability, and durability of a condenser surface remains a persistent challenge. Coalescence-induced condensing droplet jumping is a capillarity-driven mechanism of self-ejection of microscopic condensate droplets from a surface. This mechanism is highly desired due to the fact that it continuously frees up the surface for new condensate to form directly on the surface, enhancing heat transfer without requiring the presence of the gravitational field. However, this condensate ejection mechanism typically requires the fabrication of surface nanotextures coated by an ultrathin (<10 nm) conformal hydrophobic coating (hydrophobic self-assembled monolayers such as silanes), which results in poor durability. Here, we present a scalable approach for the fabrication of a hierarchically structured superhydrophobic surface on aluminum substrates, which is able to withstand adverse conditions characterized by condensation of superheated steam shear flow at pressure and temperature up to ≈1.42 bar and ≈111 °C, respectively, and velocities in the range ≈3-9 m/s. The synergetic function of micro- and nanotextures, combined with a chemically grafted, robust ultrathin (≈4.0 nm) poly-1