Zulkifli, Nor Ashikin (2023) Growth and characterization of zinc oxide superhydrophobic nanostructures grown using facile hydrothermal method. Masters thesis, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia.

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Abstract

Superhydrophobic surfaces can stay dry and self-clean and provide other benefits, such as anti-corrosion and anti-algae. These characteristics are due to the high-water repellent properties where water droplets would form a large contact angle (θ ≥ 150°). This type of surface can be synthesized by roughening the surface by creating rough topographic features such as nanostructures. This research investigated ZnO nanostructures synthesized on a glass substrate to create a superhydrophobic surface. ZnO is a great candidate as it can easily form into various types of nanostructures such as nanorods, nanowires, nanorings, among others. A ZnO seed layer was first deposited onto the substrate via Radio Frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering. This seed layer acts as a nucleation site for forming nanostructures grown via the hydrothermal method. The hydrothermal method was carried out using various precursor concentrations ranging from 25 to 300 mM and different pH values ranging from pH 2.0 to 11.0. The growth temperature and the growth time were fixed at 100°C and 5 hours, respectively. The morphology of the nanostructures formed was characterized using Field-Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM) showing the nanorods, nano-disk, and flower-like growth within the varied parameters. Increasing the concentrations led to the different densities and sizes of nanorods that were also increasing. Meanwhile, increasing the value of pH resulted in variations of ZnO nanostructures. An optical angle meter was used to measure the resulting contact angle, which demonstrated that the density and homogeneity of the surfaces are equally important in determining the water contact angle in addition to the shape of nanostructures. Hence, higher homogeneity resulted in a higher contact angle, and low homogeneity resulted in a low contact angle. Through this study, the best sample was found to be a ZnO nanorods sample grown with 25 mM growth solution concentration with the highest average water contact angle, which is 150.3°. This property can be considered superhydrophobic based on the large contact angle

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