Super wetting of micro &nano structured titania surfaces

Surfaces with tunable wettability are of great importance for both fundamental research and practical applications such as heat pipes. In this work, micro-& nano-textured (bitextured) titania structures (BTS) based on titanium micromachining and surface oxidization techniques are proposed to function as wicking material requiring super wetting by common fluids such as water. We show theoretical studies and experimental work to investigate the wetting behavior of two different designs of BTS. For heat pipe applications the BTS not only increases the capillary pressure which enhances liquid pumping, but also increases the heat transfer performance by extended surface and smaller pore sizes.