Confined wetting of water on CNT web patterned surfaces

We report the formation of a thin liquid film of pre-determined shape that is achieved through wetting of water on a silicon surface patterned with aligned carbon nanotube arrays or CNT webs. We measured the profiles of liquid films on two types of silicon substrate surfaces (namely, with and withou...

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Veröffentlicht in:Applied physics letters 2017-10, Vol.111 (16)
Hauptverfasser: Zhao, Yugang, Lin, Rongzhou, Tran, Tuan, Yang, Chun
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:We report the formation of a thin liquid film of pre-determined shape that is achieved through wetting of water on a silicon surface patterned with aligned carbon nanotube arrays or CNT webs. We measured the profiles of liquid films on two types of silicon substrate surfaces (namely, with and without a patterned CNT web) using monochrome interferometry. We found that the CNT web patterned surface produces a much thinner liquid film with a well-controlled shape due to the roughness-induced wetting enhancement on the CNT web and the anchoring effect of contact lines at morphological edges. We further used a thermodynamic surface energy based model to interpret our experimental observations and to elucidate the underlying mechanism of wetting enhancement induced by the CNT web. Our study provides a promising approach for forming thin liquid films of controllable pre-determined shape that has numerous potential applications.
ISSN:0003-6951
1077-3118
DOI:10.1063/1.4999438