Receding contact line dynamics on superhydrophobic surfaces

TL;DR

This study investigates how receding contact lines behave on superhydrophobic micropillar surfaces, revealing lower contact angle dependence on speed and the influence of surface fraction, with implications for understanding wetting dynamics.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the dynamic contact angle behavior on superhydrophobic surfaces with micropillar arrays, highlighting the effects of surface fraction and microtexture patterns.

Findings

Superhydrophobic surfaces show lower contact angle dependence on contact line speed.

Higher pillar surface fraction increases contact angle dependence, approaching smooth surface behavior.

Surface texture pattern type has minimal impact on angle-velocity relationships.

Abstract

We have explored receding contact line dynamics on superhydrophobic surfaces, composed of micropillars arrays. We present here dynamic receding contact angle measurements of water on such surfaces, covering contact line speeds spanning over five decades. We have studied the effect of pillars fraction on dynamical receding contact angles. We compared these measurements to those on smooth surfaces with the same chemical nature and also with similar systems reported in the literature. We show that superhydrophobic surfaces exhibit a significantly lower dependence of contact angle on contact line speed compared to smooth surfaces. Additionally, we observed that a higher surface fraction of pillars leads to a greater dependence of the contact angle on contact line speed, approaching the dependence of the angle on smooth surface. Interestingly, we show that the exact texuration of the surface does not play a fundamental role in the angle-velocity relationships as long as microtextures present the same type of periodic pattern (pillar arrays or microgrid). These results are interpreted in terms of viscous friction reduction on superhydrophobic surfaces, shedding light on the underlying mechanisms governing their unique dynamic behavior. In addition we show that contact angles follow same laws for two different geometries (milimetric sessile drop and a centimetric capillary bridge).