Effect of Surface Charge Characteristics of Ferroelectric LiNbO(3) on Wettability of Ionic Liquids

Electrowetting is a widely used and effective method to tune the wettability of ionic liquids at solid-liquid interfaces, but it usually requires an external electric field. Here, we proposed a strategy for conveniently tuning ionic liquid wettability by adopting ferroelectric LiNbO(3) single crystals as functional substrates. A heating pretreatment process was applied to modulate the surface charge characteristics of LiNbO(3) substrates, leading to an improved wettability of [EMIM][BF(4)] and [EMIM][NTf(2)] on the LiNbO(3) substrates with both positively poled (+Z) and negatively poled (−Z) surfaces. This work may be of great interest in the field of ferroelectric-based microelectronics.