Silicone-Rubber (SR) is an elastomer prominently used in biomedical and medical devices, implants, and winter shoe industries because of its stability, durability, friction properties, biocompatibility, anti-bacterial, temperature resistance, and hypoallergenic characteristics. However, inherent hydrophobicity limits the use of SR as it cannot form a protective liquid layer for implants and medical devices while placed internally or externally and impairs tissue adhesion as well. Moreover, hydrophobicity reduces ice adhesion strength in the absence of capillary bridges and that makes winter shoe-soles more slippery. The physical and chemical solutions like oxidation, UV, plasma, corona discharge, gamma radiation, and Laser radiation grafting to turn SR into hydrophilic are either temporary or change the bulk properties of the compounds. We propose an innovative multifunctional SR composite incorporating zirconia and/or titania nanoparticles produced by roller mixing followed by hot compression moulding (pressure/heating vulcanisation). Subsequently, nature-inspired patterns like gecko or frog toepads are produced on SR compound by Laser-Surface-Texturing (LST) to expose the nanoparticles that attract water molecules. A parametric optimisation along with nano-powder percentage decides the wettability of the composite. A permanent superhydrophilic SR compound was produced that can be further used to increase ice adhesion to manufacture anti-slipping winter shoe-soles or other biomedical applications.This work was supported by Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) national funds,
under the national support to R&D units grant. The work is supported by the project
“BioInSole-Multi-Functional Bioinspired Slip Resistant Shoe-Sole” under the reference
UIDP/04436/2020 and Association for Innovation and Development from FCT (Caparica)
(PTDC/EME-EME/7860/2O20). Vipin Richhariya also acknowledges FCT for his individual
PhD scholarship through “Design and development of multifunctional surfaces to control
friction behaviour in the presence of water” under the reference UI/BD/150939/2021
