Abstract :
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−1 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.
Keywords:
wettability control; injection moulding process; nanostructure; hydrophilic surface; capillary effect
References :
• Takada, Naoki; Matsumoto, Junichi; Matsumoto, Sohei; Kurihara, Kazuma. Phase-field model-based simulation of two-phase fluid motion on partially wetted and textured solid surface. Journal of Computational Science. 2016, Vol. 17, p. 315-324. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocs.2016.05.009
• Takada, Naoki; Matsumoto, Junichi; Matsumoto, Sohei. Phase-field model-based simulation of motions of a two-phase fluid on solid surface. Journal of Computational Science and Technology. 2013, Vol. 7, No. 2, p. 322-337. https://doi.org/10.1299/jcst.7.322
Special Issue :
Precise Polymer Processing Technology
Cite this article :
Kurihara, K.; Hokari, R.; Takada, N. Capillary effect enhancement in a plastic capillary tube by nanostructured surface. Polymers. 2021, Vol. 13, No. 4, 628, 12pp. https://doi.org/10.3390/polym13040628