Wetting phenomenon in nanoporous gold films

Seker, Erkin, Tauer, Tania, Zhu, Jianzhong, Begley, Matthew, Bart-Smith, Hilary, Zangari, Giovanni, Kelly, Robert G., Utz, Marcel and Reed, Michael L. (2007) Wetting phenomenon in nanoporous gold films. ECS Transactions, 6 (11), 83-89. (doi:10.1149/1.2790417).

Abstract

We have fabricated nanoporous gold (np-Au) films on silicon wafers by dealloying films formed by simultaneous sputter deposition of gold and silver. We report an interesting wetting phenomenon observed after placing a droplet of liquid on the np-Au film surface. As a droplet was dispensed onto the surface, wetting equilibrium was quickly reached and a wetting halo appeared with its perimeter equidistant from the perimeter of the droplet. Non-porous gold control samples did not display such behavior. This phenomenon was systematically studied by dispensing liquid droplets with different surface tensions and then measuring the width of the wetting halo. It was observed that halo width increased with surface tension. Experiments were extended to observe the effects of film thickness and porosity on the halo width. The width increased as film thickness increased. The relationship between the width and porosity was inconclusive due to large data scatter

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Contributors

Author: Marcel Utz

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