Shuhao Liu
University of Texas at Tyler, TX·Materials Science
Water-repellent surfaces stay cleaner, resist ice and corrode less, which makes them useful in medical, aerospace and energy settings. Making them reliably is hard.
- Fields
Materials Science
Engineering
Chemistry
- Topics
superhydrophobic coatings
water-repellent surfaces
PFAS-free
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Establish a scalable convective self-assembly process that uses meniscus-guided blade coating to form ordered silica nanoparticle arrays on aluminum and high-density polyethylene (HDPE).
- Quantify how coating speed, particle concentration and size, solvent, temperature, humidity and surface conditions control particle spacing, order and defects, and build process–structure–property maps.
- Model particle–particle and particle–substrate interactions to explain how they drive nanoparticle assembly, spacing and defect formation in close-packed and non-close-packed patterns.
- Treat selected ordered textures with fluorine-free alkyl- and PDMS-based chemistries and compare their superhydrophobicity and durability against spray-coated controls.
More about the research
Precise patterning methods are costly and hard to scale up. Cheaper methods give messy, defect-filled patterns that do not last. Many strong water-repellent treatments also rely on fluorinated chemicals such as PFAS, which raise safety concerns. This project aims to build a simple, scalable way to lay down ordered nanoparticle patterns on everyday materials and make them water-repellent without fluorine.
Why it matters
Industries that need surfaces to stay clean, shed ice or resist corrosion, from aerospace to energy and biomedical devices, lack water-repellent coatings that are cheap, scalable, durable and free of fluorinated PFAS chemicals. Design rules for ordered silica nanoparticle textures on aluminum and plastic, paired with fluorine-free treatments, could help manufacturers make safer, longer-lasting water-repellent coatings at larger scale.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Qian Chen
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Materials Science
Identify the surface forces that cause ligand molecules to form patches in specific regions of nanoparticles. The goal is to learn how to break particle symmetry and create directional interactions, combining theory, simulation and experiments.
Tingyi Liu
University of Massachusetts, MA·Engineering
Develop a stretchable, ion-blocking insulating coating for bioelectronics by engineering existing stretchable materials to mimic the cell membrane's lipid bilayer.
T Randall Lee
University of Houston, TX·Chemistry
Design multidentate adsorbates that combine phase-incompatible or structurally dissimilar parts, and test whether they form stable, evenly mixed films that could serve as nanoscale anti-fouling coatings.
The school
University of Texas at Tyler: 1 labs on PI Pages, $4M a year on research, 47 research doctorates a year.
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