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To describe the wetting properties of various wood types from a practical point of view, the surface free energy of six tropical (guava, almond, teak, cloves, mango and neem) and six European wood species (English oak, Norway maple, hazel, ash, alder and Scots pine) were calculated using contact angles by the sessile-drop method. In order to provide water-repellent characteristics to the samples, they were silanized by a less used silylating reagent (using chloroform solution of trimethylsilyl N,N-dimethylcarbamate) and the results were compared with the effect of two commonly used reagents (chloroform solutions of chlorotrimethylsilane and octadecyltrichlorosilane). Since the Lifshitz-van der Waals/acid-base model is widely used in studies of biological surfaces, the energetics of the resultant wood surfaces were quantitatively described in terms of this model. For the mainly hydrophobic wood samples, anomalous surface behaviour (i.e. extremely high water contact angles (130-145 • ) and in certain cases unreasonably low surface free energy values) was found. Since the Lifshitz-van der Waals/acid-base model did not yield numerical results in some cases and the calculated surface free energies depended on the test liquid triplet used, the limitations in the applicability of this model are also discussed. For comparison, we analyzed our data also in terms of the Chang model.

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Surfaces of three European wood species (namely, English oak, Hungarian oak, and Scots pine) and two tropical wood species (namely, teak and cloves) were silylated with dichlorodimethylsilane (DDS), dichlorodiphenylsilane (DPS) and octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) in the first step, and with chlorotrimethylsilane (CTMS) as a monofunctional reagent in a second step. Attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FT-IR) and electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis (ESCA) measurements were performed in order to characterize the surface composition of the treated samples. The progress of surface modification was also monitored by contact angle measurements of different test liquids (water, formamide and diiodomethane). The water contact angles were found to be in the range of 808 to 1458. The most hydrophobic surface was obtained by two-step silylation by OTS and CTMS (water contact angles were between 1318 and 1408). Interestingly, the hydrophobicity of DDS-treated samples showed a significant decrease after additional silylation by CTMS. The surface free energy values were evaluated in terms of the Lifshitz-van der Waals/acid-base theory. The results obtained by the surface analytical methods (i.e. FT-IR and ESCA measurements) were compared with the contact angle data. These results suggest that in the case of DDS-treated samples, CTMS molecules substitute partly the DDS molecules, thus only physisorption of the silylating agents is supposed at room temperature.

Surfaces of three European (English oak, ash and Scots pine) and three tropical (teak, cloves and neem) wood species were silylated with chlorotrimethylsilane, octadecyltrichlorosilane, trimethylsilyl N,N-dimethylcarbamate and an alkoxysilane-terminated surfactant introducing diethoxy-silyl groups onto the surface structure. For the study of surface composition, ATR-FTIR and ESCA measurements were performed. The hydrophobicity of the surfaces was studied by contact angle determinations.

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