The Effective Interfacial Tensions between Pure Liquids and Rough Solids: A Coarse-Grained Simulation Study

TL;DR

This study uses coarse-grained simulations to analyze how surface roughness affects the solid-liquid interfacial tension, revealing that increased roughness and repulsion strength raise the effective interfacial tension and alter liquid structure near the surface.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation approach to quantify the impact of surface roughness and repulsion strength on interfacial tension between liquids and solids.

Findings

Surface roughness increases effective solid-liquid interfacial tension.

Effective SL IFT is proportional to solid-liquid repulsion strength.

Roughness alters the liquid structure near the solid surface.

Abstract

The effective solid liquid interfacial tension (SL IFT) between pure liquids and rough solid surfaces is studied through coarse grained simulations. Using the dissipative particle dynamics method, we design solid liquid interfaces, confining a pure liquid between two explicit solid surfaces with different roughness degrees. The roughness of the solid phase was characterized by Wenzel roughness factor and the effective SL IFT ({\gamma}_sl^') is reported as a function of it also. Two solid liquid systems differentiated from each other by their solid liquid repulsion strength are studied to measure the effects caused by the surface roughness on the calculation of {\gamma}_sl^'. We found that the roughness produces changes in the structure of the liquid, which is observed in the first layer of liquid near the solid. These changes are responsible for the effective SL IFT increase as surface roughness increases. Although there is a predominance of surface roughness in the calculation of {\gamma}_sl^', it is found that the effective SL IFT is directly proportional to the magnitude of the solid liquid repulsion strength. The insights provided by these simulations suggest that the increase of Wenzel roughness factor is a direct consequence of the increase in surface area due to the vertical deviations measured in the topography. This, in turn, produces an increase in the number of effective solid liquid interactions between particles, eventually yielding significant changes in the local values of the normal and tangential components of the pressure tensor.