Wetting of Surfaces Covered by Elastic Hairs

Abstract

We study the wetting properties of elastic hairy surfaces. Neither our theory nor our experiments support the suggestion by Otten and Herminghaus [Langmuir 2004, 20, 2405-2408] that the interplay between wetting, capillary interactions, and elasticity is responsible for the hydrophobic behavior of the leaves of a Lady's Mantle. Instead, the corresponding observations can be attributed to pinning of the contact line.