In hydrogen production catalysts, water droplets must detach easily from the surface to prevent blockage by bubbles, allowing for faster hydrogen generation. In semiconductor manufacturing, the quality of the process is determined by how evenly water or liquid spreads on the surface, or how quickly it dries. However, directly observing how such water or liquid spreads and moves on a surface ('wettability') at the nanoscale has been technically almost impossible until now, forcing researchers to rely mostly on conjecture. KAIST announced on December 2nd that a research team led by Professor Seungbum Hong of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, in collaboration with Professor Jongwoo Lim's team at Seoul National University, has developed a technology to directly observe nano-sized water droplets in real-time using an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) and to calculate the contact angle based on the droplet's shape. This research, by enabling the visual confirmation of the actual shape of nano-droplets, allows for the precise analysis of how well water droplets adhere to and detach from a surface. This is expected to be immediately applicable to various advanced technologies where liquid movement determines performance, such as hydrogen production catalysts, fuel cells, batteries, and semiconductor processes. Recently, precise measurement at the nanoscale has become crucial for wettability analysis technology. Traditional methods using large water droplets, several millimeters in size, could distinguish between hydrophilicity (where water spreads easily) and hydrophobicity (where water doesn't spread easily) on the surface. However, at the nanoscale, the droplets are too small to directly observe their shape. The research team successfully induced nano-droplets to form naturally by gently cooling the surface to a temperature where atmospheric water vapor does not freeze. They then observed these droplets using the non-contact mode of the AFM to capture their original shape. Since nano-droplets are sensitive and can be deformed by mere contact with the probe, precise control is essential. Furthermore, when the team applied this technique to the ferroelectric material lithium tantalate, they were the first to confirm a difference in the nano-droplet contact angle depending on the material's electrical direction (polarization). This difference, which was not visible with large droplets, demonstrates that nano-droplets are highly sensitive to the electrical state of the surface. The team then applied this technology to the water electrolysis catalyst used in hydrogen production, observing a single nano-droplet. This result aids in understanding how water reacts on the catalyst surface and can be used to analyze catalyst performance, particularly how well bubbles detach.
Professor Seungbum Hong stated, "This research is an important case demonstrating that the Atomic Force Microscope can be used to directly visualize nano-sized water droplets and even measure the contact angle. Being able to observe the behavior of water droplets in the nano-world, which was previously invisible, will establish this as a core analysis technology for the development of next-generation energy and electronic materials." This research, in which Uichang Jeong, a PhD candidate in the KAIST Department of Materials Science and Engineering, participated as the first author, was published on October 17th in 'ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces', a prestigious journal in the field of new materials and chemical engineering published by the American Chemical Society (ACS).
This research was supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Research Foundation of Korea.