Picoliter Water Contact Angle Measurement on Polymers

Abstract

Water contact angle measurement is the most common method for determining a material's wettability, and the sessile drop approach is the most frequently used. However, the method is generally limited to macroscopic measurements because the base diameter of the droplet is usually greater than 1 mm. Here we report for the first time on a dosing system to dispense smaller individual droplets with control of the position and investigate whether water contact angles determined from picoliter volume water droplets are comparable with those obtained from the conventional microliter volume water droplets. This investigation was conducted on a group of commonly used polymers. To demonstrate the higher spatial resolution of wettability that can be achieved using picoliter volume water droplets, the wettability of a radial plasma polymer gradient was mapped using a 250 μm interval grid.