Investigating the Effect of Hierarchical Carbon Micro/Nano Spheres on the Surface Wettability: Experimental and Theoretical Study

نویسندگان

1 Department of Physics, Faculty of Basic Science, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, I. R. of Iran

2 Department of Physics, Faculty of Physics, Sharif University of Technology, P.O.Box: 11155-9161, Tehran, IR of Iran

3 Department of Physics, Faculty of Basic Science, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, I. R. of Iran

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چکیده

Carbon spheres with controllable structures (i.e., nano and microstructure)were prepared by using a hydrothermal method. By adjusting the concentration ofglucose solution at a both constant temperature and constant process time in a sealedautoclave, the total size of carbon spheres (CSs) was changed from nano to microscale.Then micronanobinary carbon spheres structure (MNCS) was successfully obtained bycoating colloidal solution of carbon nanospheres (CNSs, average diameter of 186 nm)and microspheres (CMSs, average diameter of 5 μm) on the FTO substrates. It wasrealized that by annealing of the carbon spheres under vacuum condition, theirfunctional groups were reduced, therefore, this effected on the wetting behavior ofcarbon spheres. The effect of hierarchical roughness as a beneficial factor on thesuperhydrophobicity of CSs was analyzed by the investigation of the contact angle(CA). The highest CA was measured for the mixture structures containing both themicro and nanoscale spheres. Based on the new research, CA of the surface withmicronanobinary structure is larger than the nanostructure and the nanostructure islarger than the microstructure and above all, theoretical calculations confirmed theexperimental measurements.