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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 21, 2025

Scalable Stamp Printing and Fabrication of Hemiwicking Surfaces

Scalable Stamp Printing and Fabrication of Hemiwicking Surfaces

Published on: December 18, 2018

'Rewritable' and 'liquid-specific' recognizable wettability pattern.

Manideepa Dhar¹, Debasmita Sarkar¹, Avijit Das¹

¹Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati, Guwahati, Assam, 781039, India.

Nature Communications

|July 11, 2024

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers developed a novel liquid-specific wettability pattern that can be rewritten. This pattern selectively controls the movement of low surface tension liquids, enabling new applications in liquid manipulation and separation.

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Area of Science:

Materials Science
Surface Chemistry
Microfluidics

Background:

Bio-inspired surfaces with patterned wettability are crucial for liquid manipulation.
Current wettability patterns confine liquids by sacrificing anti-wetting properties, regardless of surface tension (γ_LV).
A limitation exists in controlling liquids with varying surface tensions using existing methods.

Purpose of the Study:

To introduce a novel 'liquid-specific' wettability pattern.
To demonstrate selective control over low surface tension liquids (<30 mN m^-1) by sacrificing slipperiness.
To enable rewritable and tunable liquid manipulation for non-aqueous solutions.

Main Methods:

Fabrication of a chemically reactive crystalline network using a phase-transitioning polymer.
Strategic chemical modification of the surface to induce liquid-specific interactions.
Utilizing phase-transition phenomena to reversibly alter surface properties.

Main Results:

The designed surface exhibits effortless sliding for both low and high γ_LV liquids initially.
Chemical modification causes low γ_LV liquids to spill, while high γ_LV liquids continue to slide.
Phase-transition allows the surface to regain slipperiness for low γ_LV liquids, demonstrating a 'rewritable' property.

Conclusions:

A novel, rewritable, and liquid-specific wettability pattern has been successfully developed.
This technology enables selective manipulation and separation of non-aqueous liquids based on their surface tension.
Potential applications include high-throughput screening and advanced liquid handling systems.