| Abstract
| - In this study, we compared the wetting and electrowetting properties of a planar parylene (poly(p-xylylene))film to those of a nanostructured parylene film. To generate the nanostructured film, we used an alignedarray of multiwalled carbon nanotubes as a template; a thin coating of parylene was deposited on the nanotubetemplate to generate a parylene film with a nanoscale roughness structure. Static contact angle measurementsindicated a very significant increase in the water contact angle from ∼73° for planar parylene to ∼110° forthe nanotemplated parylene. In addition, we performed electrowetting experiments to dynamically tune thecontact angle by application of electric potential. Interestingly, the flat parylene film showed contact anglesaturation at an applied voltage of ∼40 V, while the nanotemplated parylene film did not experience saturationin the contact angle response even for voltages up to 80 V. These results show that engineering a nanoscaleroughness structure to a polymer film results in significant changes to the wetting and electrowetting propertiesof the polymer.
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