Recently, Olesya Bliznyuk has successfully defended her PhD thesis, entitled: Directional wetting on patterned surfaces.
Summary
The investigation of wetting phenomena, i.e. how liquids interact with underlying substrates, is a branch of physics of great interest from both a fundamental as well as an applied point of view. An interesting class of substrates comprises anisotropically structured surfaces. These surfaces define a certain direction in which wetting is favourable
while inhibiting liquid motion in the other. In this thesis a systematic study of the static and kinetic behaviour of liquid droplets on surfaces with anisotropic wettability is performed to obtain a better understanding of the interdependence of the static shape on the underlying structures. Two types of surfaces with anisotropic wettability are considered in this work: (i) flat chemically defined patterns consisting of stripes of alternating wettability, and (ii) morphologically microstructured surfaces consisting of shallow grooves. Moreover, the application of wettability gradients to induce droplet motion is presented.
