Capillary Effect Enhancement in a Plastic Capillary Tube by Nanostructured Surface

We investigated the enhancement of the capillary effect in a plastic capillary tube using only a nanostructured surface. Since plastic is a hydrophobic material, the capillary effect does not emerge without an additional coating or plasma treatment process. Therefore, capillary effect enhancement by...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Kazuma Kurihara, Ryohei Hokari, Naoki Takada
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021-02-01
Series:Polymers
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/13/4/628
Description
Summary:We investigated the enhancement of the capillary effect in a plastic capillary tube using only a nanostructured surface. Since plastic is a hydrophobic material, the capillary effect does not emerge without an additional coating or plasma treatment process. Therefore, capillary effect enhancement by the nanostructure fabrication method is expected to reduce the cost and minimise the contamination produced in the human body. By combining a hydrophilic nylon resin and a nanostructure at the tip of the plastic pipette, we could confirm that the capillary effect was produced solely by the tube fabrication process. The produced capillary effect increased linearly with increasing nanostructure height when a standard solution with a surface tension of 70 mN·m<sup>−1</sup> was used. Thus, we can conclude that including the plastic part with nanostructure can be useful for biomedical applications. In addition, we suggest that the proposed method is highly effective in controlling the wetting properties of plastic surfaces, compared to the typical coating or plasma treatment processes.
ISSN:2073-4360