Mechanism of Contact Line Movement of a Droplet Spreading Over a Solid Surface

Abstract

The contact line movement, advancing and receding, of the distilled water droplet was studied on the polished and laser patterned aluminum surfaces. The obtained dependences of the dynamic contact angles on the contact line speed were fitted by the combined theory consisting of molecular-kinetic and hydrodynamic theories. Results obtained on laser patterned surface are found to fit better to the theory in comparison with polished surface. The assumption was made that this result is connected with the low contact angle hysteresis on the patterned surface compared to the polished one. It means that combined theory does not consider the contact angle hysteresis.