The analysis of sliding drop videos have emerged as a valuable tool for investigating physical phenomena (1-3). Hereby, automatic image processing enables the extraction of various measures from these videos (4, 5). On homogeneous surfaces, hydrodynamic dissipation increases with velocity. Recently, Li et al. studied drops sliding down an inclined surfaces (3) and reported an empirical...
Adaptation may play a role in materials science, biology, and engineering1, 2. Dynamic adaptation is more relevant than static wettability due to allowing for greater versatility, functionality, and control over surface properties3. The dynamic adaptation process of liquids on solid surfaces is a complex subject due to its involvement with different lengths and time scales4, 5. The challenge...
Droplets are set in motion on substrates with a spatio-temporal wettability pattern as generated, for example, on light-switchable surfaces. To study such cases, we implement the boundary-element method to solve the governing Stokes equations for the fluid flow field inside and on the surface of a droplet and supplement it by Cox–Voinov friction for the dynamics of the contact line. One...
Slide electrification of water droplets over CYTOP electrets surfaces
Shalini1,4, Dhiman Mallick1, 2, Rüdiger Berger4 and Ankur Goswami1,3
1School of Interdisciplinary Research, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi-110016, India 2Department of
Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi-110016, India ...
Despite its importance in high temperature processes (e.g. welding and coating), the wetting behavior of liquid metals on solid metals (or ceramics) at high temperatures remains poorly understood due to complex physiochemical processes e.g. surface oxidation, Marangoni flows, and interfacial reactions controlling the interfacial properties. Performing experiments above 1000°C requires a strict...
The manipulation with topography of surfaces, which can be achieved through the application of external stimuli, including temperature, magnetic fields, pH, light, and others stimuli, allows switching of wetting and adhesion. Shape-memory polymers is one kind of materials can alter their appearance under applied stress and can be used for fabrication of such smart surfaces. Particularly,...
Directional spreading and wicking of liquid drops on topographic micropatterns are studied on regular arrays of triangular posts breaking the reflection symmetry of the lattice. To test for directional wicking on this class of patterns, we employ heptane drops forming a material contact angle of 50° on Teflon coated samples fabricated using standard photolithography processes. Depending on...
Soft and wet contacts are ubiquitous across scales from geology to physiology and are crucial for engineering. Interestingly, when an object moves near a soft substrate, the generated hydrodynamic pressure would deform the substrate, then resulting in the hydrodynamic coupling. Based on the EHD coupling, we proposed a contactless way to probe the mechanical properties of soft substrate using...
Water drops moving on many surfaces experience electrical charge separation. This process leads to opposite charging of the surfaces and drops, which changes properties of this system. Electrostatic forces affect the dynamic contact angles and sliding velocity of drops.[1] In addition, charges on the surface decreases its surface energy. Recently, charging of water drops inspires many...
Electro-dewetting (EDeW) was introduced as a new method in order to change the wetting properties of surfaces. Using ionic surfactants such as dodecyl tetrethyl ammonium bromide (DTAB) the wettability of hydrophilic silicon oxides on a a conductive Si substrate can be controlled by an applied electrod potential, which leads to an increase in the contact angle. This behavior critically depends...
In this study, we aim to investigate the influence of substrate properties on biofilm spreading using a simplified model tailored to elastic substrates. The contact angle plays a key role in biofilm spreading and is related to the spreading velocity. To facilitate our mesoscale analysis, we use a model of wetting energy as a function of film height, denoted $f(h)$. In a departure from the...
Wetting has been recently identified as physiologically important in fundamental cellular processes: phase-separated condensates (e.g., proteins and RNA) form liquid droplets in cells and interact with membranes, e.g., during autophagy in eukaryotic cells or protein storage in plant vacuoles. Upon contact, the droplets can exert wetting forces on the membrane that deforms. This creates a...
Four polymer brush coatings containing photoresponsive arylazopyrazole (AAP)-based methacrylate monomers are reported. The glass substrates were functionalized using microcontact printing (µcP) and surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerisation (SI-ATRP). These polymer thin films were characterised by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and resulted in a height of 15 to 25 nm depending on...
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are an exceptional framework for highly active and functional soft matter. Briefly, LCEs couple the anisotropic LC director to a soft polymer network resulting in a zoo of phase-dependent responsive properties including reversible optical switching, mechanical stiffening, and shape-shifting in response to heat, light, or magnetic/electric fields. Here, we...
We are interested in the analysis of the (de)hydration dynamics of polymer-coated surfaces monitored with time-resolved fluorescence microscopy. In particular, the reversible changes of the wetting state in thermally-switchable polymer layers is imaged in a confocal microscope via changes of the fluorescence intensity, spectrum and/or decay time of the reporter dye due to changes of local...