Thickness dependent wetting properties and surface free energy of HfO2 thin films

We show here that intrinsic hydrophobicity of HfO2 thin films can be easily tuned by the variation of film thickness. We used the reactive high-power impulse magnetron sputtering for preparation of high-quality HfO2 films with smooth topography and well-controlled thickness. Results show a strong dependence of wetting properties on the thickness of the film in the range of 50–250 nm due to the dominance of the electrostatic Lifshitz-van der Waals component of the surface free energy. We have found the water droplet contact angle ranging from ≈120° for the thickness of 50 nm to ≈100° for the thickness of 2300 nm. At the same time the surface free energy grows from ≈25 mJ/m2 for the thickness of 50 nm to ≈33 mJ/m2 for the thickness of 2300 nm. We propose two explanations for the observed thickness dependence of the wetting properties: influence of the non-dominant texture and/or non-monotonic size dependence of the particle surface energy.