Impact of hydrophobic surfaces on capillary wetting

The dynamic wetting behavior as first step in reconstitution of heterogeneous model food powders was investigated in the present work. Therefore, we studied the capillary rise of water into single pores and pore systems containing hydrophilic and hydrophobic walls. A two-wall setup was developed to realize the capillary rise in a single gap containing walls with two different contact angles but a constant pore size. The equilibrium penetration height was measured and compared to calculated heights using advancing contact angles inserted in a model equation. Wetting experiments in a Washburn setup were performed with respect to the investigation of water penetration into a heterogeneous pore network which leads to a variable pore size during the rise. In order to determine the effect of contact angle, three different glass materials at varied levels of hydrophobicity were prepared. Furthermore, a focus was put on understanding the impact of the pore network on the wetting kinetics by mixing two size fractions of glass beads. The equilibrium heights determined in heterogeneous single gaps fit well with the calculated heights by inserting advancing contact angles into the model equation. The results of the powder systems show a significant impact on the wetting with an increasing hydrophobic fraction, while an increased hydrophobic contact angle further increased the wetting time only at higher quantities of the hydrophobic component in the sample. Furthermore, our findings emphasize the complexity of wetting into a system with heterogeneity in pore size and contact angle.

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Impact of hydrophobic surfaces on capillary wetting