Apparent line tension induced by surface-active impurities

TL;DR

This study uses computer simulations to show that tiny amounts of surface-active impurities can significantly affect measurements of apparent line tension in wetting, highlighting the importance of accounting for impurities in experiments.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates how surface-active impurities influence apparent line tension measurements, providing a quantitative analysis of their effects based on simulation data.

Findings

Trace surfactants cause measurable changes in apparent line tension.

Impurities limit the resolution of line-tension measurements.

Background impurities can lead to data misinterpretation.

Abstract

Line tension in wetting processes is of high scientific and technological relevance, but its understanding remains vague, mainly because of its difficult determination. A widely used method to extract the line tension relies on the variation of a droplet's contact angle with the droplet's size. This approach yields the apparent line tension, which factors in numerous contributions to the finite-size dependence, thus masking the actual line tension in terms of the excess free energy of the three-phase contact line. Based on our recent computer simulation study, we investigate how small amounts of nonionic surfactants, such as surface-active impurities, contribute to the apparent line tension in aqueous droplets. When depositing polydisperse droplets, their different surface-area-to-volume ratios can result in different final bulk concentrations of surfactants, different excess adsorptions to interfaces, and, consequently, different contact angles. We show that already trace amounts of longer-chained surfactants are enough to cause a measurable effect on the apparent line tension. Our analysis quantifies to what extent "background" impurities, inevitably present in all experimental settings, limit the resolution of line-tension measurements, which is crucial for avoiding data misinterpretation.