Dynamic contact angle and three-phase contact line of water drop on copper surface

Abstract

Nowadays there is a lack of experimental data describing the physical process of drop spreading on a solid metal surface for developing wetting and spreading theory. The experimental data obtained by using the high speed video-recording will allow to identify unknown previously spreading modes as well as the change of the dynamic contact angle and the three-phase contact line. The purpose of the work is to determine the effect of the drop growth rate and the copper substrate surface roughness on the dynamic contact angle and the three-phase contact line speed at distilled water drop spreading. Shadow and Schlieren methods are used to obtain experimental data. Three drop spreading modes on the rough surfaces were identified. Time dependences of the dynamic contact angle and contact line speed were obtained. Experimental results can be used for assessing the validity of the developed mathematical models of wetting and spreading processes in the field of micro- and nano-electronics, ink jet printing, thin-film coatings, spray cooling, and optoelectronics.