Observation of hydrophobic-like behavior in geometrically patterned hydrophilic microchannels

Biomicrofluidics. 2010 Oct 8;4(4):44103. doi: 10.1063/1.3499416.

Abstract

We present our observation of meta-hydrophobicity, where geometrically patterned surfaces make hydrophilic microchannels exhibit hydrophobic-like behaviors. We analyze the wetting-induced energy decrease that results from the surface geometries and experimentally demonstrate how those geometries can modulate the dynamics of capillary-driven wetting and evaporation-driven drying of microfluidic systems. Our results also show that the modulated wetting dynamics can be employed to generate regulated patterns of microbubbles.