Influence of hydrophobic characteristic of organo-modified precursor on wettability of silica film

Abstract

The objective of this study is to design new hybrid silicamaterials as templates with hydrophobic properties, prepared at room temperature by a base catalyzed sol-gel process. As silica sources, organoalkoxysilanes functionalized with short hydrophobic chains were used: tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS),methyltriethoxysilane (MTES), vinyltriethoxysilane (VTES), octyltriethoxysilane (OTES) and isobutyltriethoxysilane (iTES). It was shown that hydrophobicity of the functionalized silica nanoparticles increased as a function of length of the aliphatic chains (MTES< iTES