Anisotropic Wetting on Tunable Micro-Wrinkled Surfaces

Published

January 1, 2007

Author(s)

Jun Y. Chung, Jeffrey Youngblood, Christopher M. Stafford

Abstract

We demostrate that the buckling instability technique is promising for studying wettability because key elements of surface topography such as surface roughness can be precisely controlled by simple changes in experimental conditions. For demonstration, we investigate the anisotropic wetting on tunable micro-wrinkled surfaces, whose roughness aspect ratios (amplitude versus wavelength of the wrinkles) are well-defined and reversibly adjusted. In addition to confirming the effectiveness of this technique, our results provide new insights into the wetting behavior on a rough surface. We find that the wetting anisotropy is affected primarily by the roughness aspect ratio. We apply our experimental results to existing theoretical models and successfully demonstate that the anistotropy of the droplet distortion and contact angle with a strong anisotropic texture is attributed to the difference in the energy barrier of wetting in two orthogonal directions.

Citation

Soft Matter

Volume

3

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

buckling, contact angle, instabilities, patterning, topography, wettability, wrinkling

Citation

Chung, J. , Youngblood, J. and Stafford, C. (2007), Anisotropic Wetting on Tunable Micro-Wrinkled Surfaces, Soft Matter, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=852743 (Accessed October 24, 2025)