Eur. Phys. J. B 62, 405-410 (2008)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2008-00182-1

Strong water repellency effect on SiO₂ films processed at a nanometric scale

¹ Laboratoire PMCN, Université Lyon 1, UMR CNRS 5586, 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France
² Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche Ions Laser, CIRIL-GANIL, BP 5133, 14070 Caen Cedex 5, France
³ Institut de Nanotechnologie de Lyon, Université Lyon 1, CNRS, UMR 5270, 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France
⁴ Institut des Sciences et Techniques de l'Ingénieur de Lyon, Université Lyon1, 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France

Corresponding author: ^a Stella.Ramos-Canut@lpmcn.univ-lyon1.fr

Received: 23 July 2007
Revised: 21 January 2008
Published online: 15 May 2008

Abstract

The present study deals with the creation of nano-rough surfaces with stable and controlled high hydrophobicity. These surfaces were obtained by combining the ion track etching technique with a simple functionalization by grafting perfluoroctyltrichlorosilane (PFOTS) molecules. Surface morphology was investigated by AFM observations which evidenced a self-affine fractal structure with a fractal dimension D_f ~ 2.6. The study of the wetting properties of these surfaces allowed to elucidate the conditions for observing a high hydrophobicity phenomenon and to predict the contact angle values for surfaces designed at a nanometric scale.