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Updated: Jun 8, 2026
Monitoring Spatial Segregation in Surface Colonizing Microbial Populations
Published on: October 29, 2016
Spreading behavior of water droplets on fractal agar gel surfaces
Yoshimune Nonomura1, Yusuke Morita, Takako Hikima
1Department of Biochemical Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Yamagata University, 4-3-16 Jonan, Yonezawa 992-8510, Japan. nonoy@yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp
Abstract:
Agar gels with hierarchical rough surfaces, referred to as "fractal agar gels," were prepared to model biological surfaces coated with mucus. Agar gels with rough surfaces of fractal dimension D = 2.2 were synthesized by transferring a fractal surface structure of alkylketene dimer (AKD). The rough structure accelerated the spreading of water droplets and induced the appearance of a wicking front. The mechanism of acceleration of the spreading on fractal surfaces based on a semiquantitative theoretical model was also clarified.
