Experiments were carried out to investigate the effect of surface characteristics on flow boiling heat transfer and pressure drop in a microchannel using degasified and deionized water as the working fluid. Test section consists of a 40 mm long, 0.5 mm wide and 0.24 mm deep microchannel machined in copper. Experimental results are reported for three different surface characteristics – fresh machined surface (case-1), the same channel surface when aged after repeated experimentation (case-2) and the surface obtained after cleaning the same aged surface with 0.1 M hydrochloric acid (case-3). Parameters considered include inlet temperature 95 °C, mass flux from 1000 to 2220 kg/m2 s and heat flux from 400 to 1200 kW/m2. Single-phase experiments have been performed to estimate the heat loss from microchannel and also to validate the experimental setup. The results indicate that the boiling heat transfer performance of case-2 is lower than that of case-1 and the performance of case-3 is higher than that of case-1. The main reason behind the reduction of two-phase heat transfer coefficient for case-2 as compared to case-1 is attributed to the increased wettability due to the thermal oxidation of the heating surface caused by the repeated experimentation. The enhanced boiling performance of case-3 is attributed to the increased nucleation site density. However, the change in the two-phase pressure drop is relatively small. The experimental results were compared with the available correlations in the literature to check the predictability of the correlations for the three cases. The degree of agreement (or disagreement) varies depending on the correlation and the surface characteristic. The reasons for the deviations are discussed. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd