Abstract
It is well established that the water wettability of materials is governed by both the chemical composition and the geometrical microstructure of the surface.1 Traditional textile wet processing treatments do indeed rely fundamentally upon complete wetting out of a textile structure to achieve satisfactory performance.2 However, the complexities introduced through the heterogeneous nature of the fiber surfaces, the nature of the fiber composition and the actual construction of the textile material create difficulties in attempting to predict the exact wettability of a particular textile material. For many applications the ability of a finished fabric to exhibit water repellency (in other words low wettability) is essential2 and potential applications of highly water repellent textile materials include rainwear, upholstery, protective clothing, sportswear, and automobile interior fabrics. Recent research indicates that such applications may benefit from a new generation of water repellent materials that make use of the “lotus effect” to provide ultrahydrophobic textile materials.3,4 Ultrahydrophobic surfaces are typically termed as the surfaces that show a water contact angle greater than 150°C with very low contact angle hysteresis.4 In the case of textile materials, the level of hydrophobicity is often determined by measuring the static water contact angle only, since it is difficult to measure the contact angle hysteresis on a textile fabric because of the high levels of roughness inherent in textile structures.