Wettability of conducting polymers: From superhydrophilicity to superoleophobicity

Abstract The review reports most of the works realized in the field of the surface wettability based on conducting polymers. The surface wettability is highly depending on the intrinsic hydrophobicity of materials and the roughness geometry. Conducting polymers have unique properties allowing to tune the surface wettability, for example, by reversibly incorporating various hydrophobic/hydrophilic doping ions, by changing the nature of the polymerizable core or by functionalization with various hydrophobic/hydrophilic substituents. Conducting polymers are obtained by monomer oxidation using various strategies such as the chemical oxidative polymerization in solution, the electrochemical polymerization on conductive substrates or the vapor-phase polymerization, leading to have an easy control of the surface morphology at micro- or a nanoscale with a surface wettability going from superhydrophilicity to superoleophobicity.