Superhydrophobic multi-scale ZnO nanostructures fabricated by chemical vapor deposition method

The ZnO nanostructures were synthesized on Si(100) substrates by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. Different Morphologies of ZnO nanostructures, such as nanoparticle film, micro-pillar and micro-nano multi-structure, were obtained with different conditions. The results of XRD and TEM showed the good quality of ZnO crystal growth. Selected area electron diffraction analysis indicates the individual nano-wire is single crystal. The wettability of ZnO was studied by contact angle admeasuring apparatus. We found that the wettability can be changed from hydrophobic to super-hydrophobic when the structure changed from smooth particle film to single micro-pillar, nano-wire and micro-nano multi-scale structure. Compared with the particle film with contact angle (CA) of 90.7 degrees, the CA of single scale microstructure and sparse micro-nano multi-scale structure is 130-140 degrees, 140-150 degrees respectively. But when the surface is dense micro-nano multi-scale structure such as nano-lawn, the CA can reach to 168.2 degrees . The results indicate that microstructure of surface is very important to the surface wettability. The wettability on the micro-nano multi-structure is better than single-scale structure, and that of dense micro-nano multi-structure is better than sparse multi-structure.