Switchable Wettability States of a Ferrofluid Droplet atop a Hydrophobic Interface

Magnetically tuned soft machines offer great promise in performing a wide variety of programmable tasks via their dynamic shape adaptation and alteration. Despite dramatic recent advancements in this regard, selective reconfiguration of the wetting behavior of a ferrofluid droplet atop a hydrophobic interface adapted as a magnetically modulated micromachine remained elusive when the applied field intensity exceeds the saturation magnetization. Here we unveil a strategy to unsettle this perspective by harnessing a magnetic field-dependent magnetization phenomenon that may be exploited exclusively to arrive at highly controllable dynamic switchable wetting states of ferrofluid droplets, including the realization of wide ranges of contact angles for a given applied magnetic field. We arrive at a physical law from the resulting interplay of forces that quantifies the time dependence of the contact angle variation for a given magnetic field. Substantiated by experimental findings, our multiphysics-based simulations further evidence the possibilities of realizing switchable wetting states of soft magnetic matter over a wide range of physical parameters, delving into this principle. Disrupting the established notion of a trivially unique wetting phenomenon as governed by the droplet-substrate combination and the applied field alone, this paradigm may thus benefit a wide variety of practical applications, ranging from digital microfluidics to recombination chemistry.