I want to know about water contact angle of silica films without using any surfactants.
Silica films are generally hydrophilic. This is due to the presence of hydroxyl groups (silanol groups, Si-OH) on the surface, which can form hydrogen bonds with water molecules.
To answer your question regarding the "water contact angle of silica films without using any surfactants."
You can check out this paper. It will give you an idea of the same, as the contact angle depends a lot on the roughness of the area, the way you have prepared the films and external factors like exposure to heat or humidity or for that matter exposure to air which leads to surface contamination
Article Water Adsorption Kinetics and Contact Angles of Silica Particles
Article Effect of surface roughness and chemical composition on the ...
Hydrophobic Thin Films from Sol-Gel Processing: A Critical Review doi: 10.3390/ma14226799
I would like to add the the previous answer: you do not need any surfactant to measure the water contact angle. It is suggested to measure the advancing and receding angles to see the homogeneity of the surface.
Dear all, I would like to add to the previous answers that the silica surface is in continuous dynamic changes, so obviously the properties such contact angle will not have a constant value with respect to time. The effect becomes more pronounced when the solvent (such as water) shows high affinity (reaction) with the substrate surface (silica). Details are presented in the following paper. Please note that the main author is J. Israelachvili who has a long experience and deep expertise in the area of surfaces and interfaces interactions. My Regards
https://doi.org/10.1006/jcis.1994.1242
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