474 Prakt. Met. Sonderband 38 (2006) 
Fig. 3: A non-wettable copper surface( left), SEM micrograph (middle) and a 
intersection SEM-micrograph of the same sample (right). 
2. APPLICATIONS AND CHARACTERISATION OF ANTIADHESIVE 
SURFACES 
The number of applications for antiadhesive surfaces is truly unlimited. Industrial 
enterprises face daily several problems which are related to the fact that some fluids 
cannot be removed, or flow too slowly from surfaces. In other cases the interaction 
between surface and the surrounding fluid is detrimental for the production process. It 
is important to understand that a surface cannot be called either “adhesive” or 
“antiadhesive” since its function always depends on the “pairing” i.e. on the fluid 
which is in contact with the surface and the surface itself. Several materials can be 
removed easily from some surfaces which have a certain structure and chemical 
composition but may be literally impossible to remove from others. Moreover, 
improving anti-adhesive properties of surfaces is at the same time economically and 
from an environmental protection perspective favourable. It is easy to imagine how 
much time can be saved if large surfaces in industry such as the pharmaceutical or 
food industry can be cleaned more easily simply by using water rather than organic 
solvents. 
A simple way of characterizing antiadhesive surfaces is to measure the force 
required to “pull” an adhesive tape attached to the surface of interest. Figure 4 show 
the experimental set-up and an example of obtained force-distance graphs. The 
three different structures show different adhesive behaviour towards an acrylate 
based adhesive tape. The metal surfaces were in this case structured differently by 
using different sand blasting media of different particle size distributions. The tape is 
applied on the surface of the sample by using a cylindrical weight which is rolled over 
the sample. This is done to ensure that the adhesive tape is applied onto the sample 
with a constant and equal force which is a prerequisit for a correct interpretation of 
results. This method is currently being developed in order to make it as accurate and 
reliable as possible