Topological wetting states of microdroplets on closed-loop structured surfaces: Breakdown of the Gibbs equation at the microscale.

ABSTRACT: Microdroplets are a class of soft matter that has been extensively employed for chemical, biochemical, and industrial applications. However, fabricating microdroplets with largely controllable contact-area shape and apparent contact angle, a key prerequisite for their applications, is still a challenge. Here, by engineering a type of surface with homocentric closed-loop microwalls/microchannels, we can achieve facile size, shape, and contact-angle tunability of microdroplets on the textured surfaces by design. More importantly, this class of surface topologies (with universal genus value = 1) allows us to reveal that the conventional Gibbs equation (widely used for assessing the edge effect on the apparent contact angle of macrodroplets) seems no longer applicable for water microdroplets o

SUBMITTER: Lin D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11009642 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature