Radiation Induced Surface Activity Phenomenon: 1st Report — Surface Wettability on Metal Oxides

Improving the limit of boiling heat transfer or critical heat flux requires that the cooling liquid can contact the heating surface, or a high-wettability, highly hydrophilic heating surface, even if a vapor bubble layer is generated on the surface. We investigated surface wettability using metal oxides irradiated by gamma rays in room condition. Contact angle, an indicator of macroscopic wettability, was measured by image processing of the images obtained by a CCD video camera. The results showed that the surface wettability on oxide metal pieces of titanium, zircalloy No. 4, SUS-304 and copper improved significantly by Radiation Induced Surface Activity (RISA) phenomenon. Highly hydrophilic conditions on the test pieces were achieved after 500 kGy irradiation of ⁶⁰Co gamma ray.