Unitary Micro-Patterning Structure-Induced Hydrophobic Silicon Surface

Abstract

The relationship between the wettability and the roughness structure on silicon surface is studied. The unitary microscale square pillar arrays are fabricated by the way of inductively coupled plasma (ICP). The wettability of water droplets on the silicon surface is changed from hydrophilic to hydrophobic only by introducing microscale pillarlike structure. Furthermore, the scale effects of the unitary rough structure on hydrophobicity are investigated. For those silicon surfaces with a fixed pillar height, the relatively larger scale of grooves leads the droplets wettability state to unstable Cassie state and the contact angle will initially get larger and then decrease with the increase of groove width. The research could provide further insights into the design of functional surface with controllable roughness-induced hydrophobic.