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

The objective of this study is to design new hybrid silica materials 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 < OTES) or when, instead of a hydrophobic alkyl chains (substituting group of silica precursors), a monounsaturated group was used (VTES). It was observed that the samples responded in a specific way to each type (hydrophilic or hydrophobic) of the dropped liquid. Even though the experiments were limited to short hydrocarbon chains, they showed that there is a threshold to reach high hydrophobicity of the hybrid surface.