The Wettability and Numerical Model of Different Silicon Microstructural Surfaces

Abstract

Wettability is an important property of solid surfaces and is widely used in many industries. In this work, seven silicon microstructure surfaces were made by plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII) technology. The experimental contact angles and theoretical contact angles of various surfaces were compared, which indicated that the classical theory had great limitations in predicting the static contact angles of complex structures. A parameterized microstructure surface was established by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with a volume-of-fluid (VOF) model to analyze the reasons for the differences between experimental and theoretical contact angles. Comparing the results of experiments and simulations, it was found that the VOF model can simulate the contact angle of these surfaces very well. The geometrical models of the different microstructures were simplified, and waveforms of the surfaces were obtained.

Keywords

• silicon microstructure surface
• wettability
• contact angle
• volume of fluid (VOF)
• numerical simulation