Contact Person: Ath. Plomaritis [plomaritisath@yahoo.gr]
 

The present project is part of Marie Curie CoWet ITN. The main subjective of this project is to develop an oleophobic film, which will be able to be carried on cleaning products and after the use, of these cleaning products, the cleaned surfaces will be furnished by this film. As a result the surfaces will repel the oily dirt, so, less detergent and less effort will be needed to have this surface cleaned the next time.

The work involves study of the nature of the surfaces commonly encountered in home environment, and modification of their topography and chemistry to reach the change of the wetting properties.

The research takes place in Unilever Port Sunlight R&D laboratories and in Division of Chemical Technology, School of Chemistry, A.U.Th.

Methods used:

• Goniometer (Contact Angle measurements)
• Q-CMD (surface charge, particle size/charge)
• AFM (surface morphology, film morphology)
• Profiler (surface/film morphology, film thickness)
• Ellipsometry (film thickness, studies of adsorption kinetics)
• Neutron reflectivity (film structure/adsorption)
• Friction device (in house device to measure the effectiveness of the film)

Figure 1: The formation of the film onto the surfaces is done by immerging the surface in the solution which contains the film (a.) or using a spin coater (b.).

The parameters that are varied during these procedures are the concentration of the film and the deposition time.

Figure 2: For the CA measurements different set-up were used, not only because of some bugs we faces with a ready device but also because we are looking for better image and video quality. Kruss DSA100 a., Canon 700D + 100mm 2.8 macro lens with Sonoteck syringe pump b. and Lumix G7 + Olympus 60mm 2.8 macro lens with Sonoteck syringe pump c.

Figure 3: In order to check the thickness and the morphology of the film we use a Sensofar S Neox optical profiler Profiler.