Surface Properties of Femtosecond Laser Ablated PMMA

The effects of femtosecond laser ablation on the physical and chemical properties at the surface of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) were studied. Femtosecond laser microfabrication caused the initially wetting behavior of PMMA to become nonwetting, mainly because of the laser induced surface porosity at the submicroscale. Static and dynamic contact angle measurements along with morphological characterization revealed that after the laser irradiation, the system lies in an intermediate regime between those theorized by Wenzel and Cassie-Baxter. Spectroscopic analysis did not evidence any significant variation in the chemical properties of the processed polymeric surfaces.