Plasma enhanced Chemical Vapour deposited amorphous carbon coating for hydrophobicity enhancement in commercial cotton fabrics

Plasma enhanced Chemical Vapour deposition was employed to coat super hydrophilic cotton fabric with amorphous carbon particle to bring hydrophobicity into them. The surfaces were treated by stearic acid for further enhancing the water contact angle into superhydrophobic range. Fourier transformed infrared and Raman spectroscopic studies indicated the different bonding present in the samples. It has been shown that due to carbon coating the water contact angle attains significantly high value in the range between 135 and 145 degrees which further got enhanced beyond 150 degrees after stearic acid modification. The surface energies of the as-prepared samples were calculated using Owen's method and it has been shown that it is the polar part of the surface energy that governs the hydrophobicity of a surface. It has also been shown that the roughness of the sample is another important parameter in determining the hydrophobicity of the surface.