Phase field simulation of liquid filling on grooved surfaces for complete, partial, and pseudo-partial wetting cases.

We develop and harness a phase field simulation method to study liquid filling on grooved surfaces. We consider both short-range and long-range liquid-solid interactions, with the latter including purely attractive and repulsive interactions as well as those with short-range attraction and long-range repulsion. This allows us to capture complete, partial, and pseudo-partial wetting states, demonstrating complex disjoining pressure profiles over the full range of possible contact angles as previously proposed in the literature.

Predicting Hemiwicking Dynamics on Textured Substrates.

The ability to predict liquid transport rates on textured surfaces is key to the design and optimization of devices and processes such as oil recovery, coatings, reaction-separation, high-throughput screening, and thermal management. In this work we develop a fully analytical model to predict the propagation coefficients for liquids hemiwicking through micropillar arrays. This is carried out by balancing the capillary driving force and a viscous resistive force and solving the Navier-Stokes equation for representative channels.