Renaud Dufour

Engineering Sticky Superomniphobic Surfaces on Transparent and Flexible PDMS Substrate

Following the achievement of superhydrophobicity which prevents water adhesion on a surface, superomniphobicity extends this high repellency property to a wide range of liquids, including oils, solvents, and other low surface energy liquids. Recent theoretical approaches have yield to specific microstructures design criterion to achieve such surfaces, leading to superomniphobic structured silicon substrate. To transfer this technology on a flexible substrate, we use a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) molding process followed by surface chemical modification. It results in so-called sticky superomniphobic surfaces, exhibiting large apparent contact angles (>150°) along with large contact angle hysteresis (>10°). We then focus on the modified Cassie equation, considering the 1D aspect of wetting, to explain the behavior of droplets on these surfaces and compare experimental data to previous works to confirm the validity of this model.

Zipping Effect on Omniphobic Surfaces for Controlled Deposition of Minute Amounts of Fluid or Colloids

When a drop sits on a highly liquid-repellent surface (super-hydrophobic or super-omniphobic) made of periodic micrometer-sized posts, its contact-line can recede with very weak mechanical retention providing that the liquid stays on top of the microsized posts. Occurring in both sliding and evaporation processes, the achievement of low-contact-angle hysteresis (low retention) is required for discrete microfluidic applications involving liquid motion or self-cleaning; however, careful examination shows that during receding, a minute amount of liquid is left on top of the posts lying at the receding edge of the drop. For the first time, the heterogeneities of these deposits along the drop-receding contact-line are underlined. Both nonvolatile liquid and particle-laden water are used to quantitatively characterize what rules the volume distribution of deposited liquid. The experiments suggest that the dynamics of the liquid de-pinning cascade is likely to select the volume left on a specific post, involving the pinch-off and detachment of a liquid bridge. In an applied prospective, this phenomenon dismisses such surfaces for self-cleaning purposes, but offers an original way to deposit controlled amounts of liquid and (bio)-particles at well-targeted locations.

Contact angle hysteresis origins: Investigation on super-omniphobic surfaces

Contact angle hysteresis of liquid droplets is investigated on sticky and flexible super-omniphobic surfaces made up of PDMS–Si3N4 microstructures. Up to now, extensive studies have been focusing on the relation between hysteresis and surface properties such as roughness or defect density. However, little attention has been paid to the dependence of hysteresis with respect to the liquid surface tension. In this work, advancing and receding apparent contact angles are measured on surfaces displaying 4 different defect densities with 10 water–ethanol mixtures (surface energy ranging from 72 to 21.7 mN m−1). While advancing angles are found to be constant whatever the defect density and the liquid surface energy, receding angles exhibit more complex variations. Surprisingly, we noticed a saturation of this receding angle at low surface energy. In order to explain this phenomenon, we address the receding contact line distortion from the point of view of micro capillary bridges formation and breakage. The model is supported by fine SEM observation of the local deformation and offers a new perspective to explain the underlying mechanism of the saturation phenomenon.

Acoustic Tracking of Cassie to Wenzel Wetting Transitions

Many applications involving superhydrophobic materials require accurate control and monitoring of wetting states and wetting transitions. Such monitoring is usually done by optical methods, which are neither versatile nor integrable. This letter presents an alternative approach based on acoustic measurements. An acoustic transducer is integrated on the back side of a superhydrophobic silicon surface on which water droplets are deposited. By analyzing the reflection of longitudinal acoustic waves at the composite liquid-solid-vapor interface, we show that it is possible to track the local evolution of the Cassie-to-Wenzel wetting transition efficiently, as induced by evaporation or the electrowetting actuation of droplets.

Characterization of the state of a droplet on a micro-textured silicon wafer using ultrasound

In this work, we propose acoustic characterization as a new method to probe wetting states on a superhydrophobic surface. The analysis of the multiple reflections of a longitudinal acoustic wave from solid-liquid and solid-vapor interfaces enables to distinguish between the two well known Cassie-Baxter and Wenzel wetting configurations. The phenomenon is investigated experimentally on silicon micro-pillars superhydrophobic surfaces and numerically using a finite difference time domain method. Numerical calculations of reflection coefficients show a good agreement with experimental measurements, and the method appears as a promising alternative to optical measurement methods.

Wetting on smooth micropatterned defects

We develop a 2D model which predicts the contact angle hysteresis (CAH) introduced by smooth micropatterned defects. The defects are modeled by a smooth function, and the CAH is explained using a tangent line solution. When the liquid micro-meniscus touches both sides of the defect simultaneously, depinning of the contact line occurs and the droplet “pops-up.” The defects are fabricated using the photoresist SU-8. The experimental results, using common liquids (water, isopropyl alcohol, and ethylene glycol), agree well with the predictions of the model. The profile of the defect has a large influence on the CAH.

Filling transitions on rough surfaces: Inadequacy of Gaussian surface models.

We present numerical studies of wetting on various topographic substrates, including random topographies. We find good agreement with recent predictions based on an analytical interface-displacement-type theory, except that we find critical end points within the physical parameter range. As predicted, Gaussian random surfaces are found to behave qualitatively different from non-Gaussian topographies. This shows that Gaussian random processes as models for rough surfaces must be used with great care, if at all, in the context of wetting phenomena.