Wetting of Water on Graphene

TL;DR

This study clarifies that single-layer graphene is superhydrophobic with negligible water adhesion, while thicker graphene flakes adsorb water, resolving controversies about graphene's wetting properties.

Contribution

The paper provides experimental evidence that single-layer graphene does not adsorb water and is superhydrophobic, supported by van der Waals interaction calculations and independent droplet experiments.

Findings

Single-layer graphene does not adsorb water, indicating a contact angle of ~180°.

Thicker graphene flakes adsorb water, showing different wetting behavior.

Van der Waals interactions are too weak to promote adhesion in single-layer graphene.

Abstract

The wetting properties of graphene have proven controversial and difficult to assess. The presence of a graphene layer on top of a substrate does not significantly change the wetting properties of the solid substrate, suggesting that a single graphene layer does not affect the adhesion between the wetting phase and the substrate. However, wetting experiments of water on graphene show contact angles that imply a large amount of adhesion. Here, we investigate the wetting of graphene by measuring the mass of water vapor adsorbing to graphene flakes of different thickness at different relative humidities. Our experiments unambiguously show that the thinnest of graphene flakes do not adsorb water, from which it follows that the contact angle of water on these flakes is ~180o. Thicker flakes of graphene nanopowder, on the other hand, do adsorb water. A calculation of the van der Waals (vdW) interactions that dominate the adsorption in this system confirms that the adhesive interactions between a single atomic layer of graphene and water are so weak that graphene is superhydrophobic. The observations are confirmed in an independent experiment on graphene-coated water droplets that shows that it is impossible to make liquid 'marbles' with molecularly thin graphene.