Wetting transition on heated microstructrured superhydrophobic surface

Abstract

Superhydrophobic surface has attracted significant attention since their potentiality to industrial and academic applications. Moreover, superhydrophobic surface wettability at non-ambient temperature, especially at high temperature (but not boiling) was of great importance in many industrial processes. In this paper, we designed and fabricated 4 series superhydrophobic micro-pillar surfaces on the Silicon wafers to investigate wettability at different temperatures. These micro-pillar surfaces were fabricated by photolithography and ICP etching technologies. The temperature-dependent wettability of DI water droplets was characterized using contact angle measurements. The wetting behavior was observed to be different on the surfaces, and the wetting transition occurred at a specific temperature.