Wetting behavior and drainage of water droplets on microgrooved brass surfaces

In the present study, contact angle hysteresis and sliding behavior of water droplets on parallel, periodic microgrooved brass surfaces are investigated experimentally for enhancement of water drainage and compared to that on flat baseline surfaces. The surfaces (a total of 17 microgrooved samples, with a range of groove depth of 22 to 109 μm, pillar width of 26 to 190 μm, and groove width of 103 and 127 μm) are fabricated using a mechanical micromachining process. The wetting state and shape/elongation of deposited water droplets, anisotropy of the contact angle hysteresis, and the drainage behavior of water droplets on the microgrooved surfaces are found to be strongly dependent on the topography of the groove geometry, which is analyzed in detail. The wetting state is found to be Wenzel for microgrooved surfaces with very low aspect ratio (<0.2) and narrow pillars (pillar width to groove width ratio of ≈0.2), and also for the two deepest grooved surfaces of two different sample series, all of which exhibit high contact angle hysteresis. Mechanisms of the advancing and receding motions are identified. The critical sliding angle (the angle from horizontal at incipient motion of the advancing confluence) for the microgrooved surfaces is found to be significantly smaller than for flat surfaces. The sliding angle exhibits significant groove geometry dependence and is found to increase with pillar width and decrease with groove depth. The findings of this study may be useful in a broad range of applications where water retention plays an important role.