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Hydrophilic glass bath

Submitted by cmarkum on Wed, 02/04/2009 - 14:48

My name is Craig Markum and I'm new to the SHArK project at the University of Wyoming. I'm going to be working on the pipette method and was wondering what tips, hints, or secrets are out there regarding this procedure. I'm especially concerned with the KOH/isopropyl alcohol soak to make the glass hydrophilic. Is there a specific ratio that works best or maybe another solution you've found to work well? Any information that anybody has involving this technique would be greatly appreciated!

Cleaning procedure

Submitted by gildevin on Sat, 02/28/2009 - 18:30.

Hopefully you have already received some help in this area.

Here is the cleaning procedure we use:

1)Let FTO glass substrate sit in a base bath of KOH in isopropyl alcohol (to saturation) for 0.5 hours.
2)Let substrate sit in deionized water bath for 10 min.
3)Rinse substrate with 100% ethanol.

Then to achieve a hydrophobic effect we have tried two things:

4)Let substrate soak FTO side down in methanol for 10 min.

or

4)Let substrate soak face down in 6% by volume dichlorodimethylsilane (99%) in hexanes for 10 min.
5)Rinse substrate with hexanes.
6)Let substrate dry in 60 degree C oven for 1 hour.
7)Let substrate cool for 10 min.

Substrates treated with the silane solution are much more hydrophobic than those treated with methanol.

Hope this helps,

Gildevin
jagudajg@reed.edu