Dynamic contact angle measurements on superhydrophobic surfaces

In this paper, the dynamic advancing and receding contact angles of a series of aqueous solutions were measured on a number of hydrophobic and superhydrophobic surfaces using a modified Wilhelmy plate technique. Superhydrophobic surfaces are hydrophobic surfaces with micron or nanometer sized surface roughness. These surfaces have very large static advancing contact angles and little static contact angle hysteresis. In this study, the dynamic advancing and dynamic receding contact angles on superhydrophobic surfaces were measured as a function of plate velocity and capillary number. The dynamic contact angles measured on a smooth hydrophobic Teflon surface were found to obey the scaling with capillary number predicted by the Cox-Voinov-Tanner law, ΘD³ ∞ Ca. The response of the dynamic contact angle on the superhydrophobic surfaces, however, did not follow the same scaling law. The advancing contact angle was found to remain constant at Θ_A = 160^°, independent of capillary number. The dynamic receding contact angle measurements on superhydrophobic surfaces were found to decrease with increasing capillary number; however, the presence of slip on the superhydrophobic surface was found to result in a shift in the onset of dynamic contact angle variation to larger capillary numbers. In addition, a much weaker dependence of the dynamic contact angle on capillary number was observed for some of the superhydrophobic surfaces tested.