Superhydrophobic Ski Bases for Reduced Water Adhesion.

The speed of an alpine ski depends on many properties, including the chemical composition of the base material, the surface structuring of the base and the complex tribology involving the base, the snow and the intermediate water layer that develops as a consequence of solar heating and friction. Using the superhydrophobic properties of some natural leaves as a template, samples of UHMWPE were hot embossed using stainless steel meshes of different mesh sizes using a hot press at constant 300N applied force for different periods of time. It was found that as the mesh size increased, decreasing the surface feature size from 78 to 51μm, the contact angle increased, indicating lower surface wetting and a higher degree of hydrophobicity. In the case of the 325 mesh sample, the contact angle was increased from 78.35° in the virgin untreated sample to 112.84° in the thermally patterned sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]