Microwave-/UV-assisted Enhancement of the Wettability of Photoactive TiO₂ Substrates Coated on an Inactive Ti/i-TiO₂...

Titanium dioxide (TiO₂) has been proven to be an excellent system for wettability patterning purposes because of its super hydrophilic ability and its oxidative/reductive degradation of substances when exposed to UV radiation. TiO₂ substrates upon which was deposited a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of n-octadecyltrimethoxysilane (ODS) shifts the surface to become super hydrophobic, which when subjected to UV irradiation causes the ODS compound to be degraded with the substrate turning back to be super hydrophilic. Such events allow wettability patterns to be easily created. The objective of this study was to reduce the time required to construct a wettability pattern. For this purpose, highly photoactive TiO₂ nanoparticles were coated onto a titanium plate whose surface had been previously oxidized at high temperatures in an electric furnace. The subsequent TiO₂/Ti system was microwaved and simultaneously irradiated with ultraviolet light (UV) to further accelerate its photocatalytic activity. Using a set of photomasks and both UV and microwave irradiation, the generation of a pattern was achieved 15 times faster (2 min versus 30 min) compared to an earlier result that used only UV radiation.