Fabrication of pillar-array superhydrophobic silicon surface and thermodynamic analysis on the wetting state transition

Abstract

Textured silicon (Si) substrates decorated with regular microscale square pillar arrays of nearly the same side length, height, but different intervals are fabricated by inductively coupled plasma, and then silanized by self-assembly octadecyl-trichlorosilane (OTS) film. The systematic water contact angle (CA) measurements and micro/nanoscale hierarchical rough structure models are used to analyze the wetting behaviors of original and silanized textured Si substrates each as a function of pillar interval-to-width ratio. On the original textured Si substrate with hydrophilic pillars, the water droplet possesses a larger apparent CAs (> 90°) and contact angle hysteresis (CAH), induced by the hierarchical roughness of microscale pillar arrays and nanoscale pit-like roughness. However, the silanized textured substrate shows superhydrophobicity induced by the low free energy OTS overcoat and the hierarchical roughness of microscale pillar arrays, and nanoscale island-like roughness. The largest apparent CA on the superhydrophobic surface is 169.8°. In addition, the wetting transition of a gently deposited water droplet is observed on the original textured substrate with pillar interval-to-width ratio increasing. Furthermore, the wetting state transition is analyzed by thermodynamic approach with the consideration of the CAH effect. The results indicate that the wetting state changed from a Cassie state to a pseudo-Wenzel during the transition.