Wetting Properties of Surfactant Solutions at Superhydrophobic Surfactes in air and liquid environment

Wetting studies regarding amphiphilic molecules and adsorption properties on highly water repellent solid surfaces play key roles in research and technology, with increasing interest in different fields. From self-cleaning materials to microfluidic devices many applications can exploit the wetting characteristic of nature inspired surfaces showing contact angle above 150° and a very small hysteresis. Nevertheless the wetting properties of aqueous surfactant solutions, non aqueous liquids or immiscible phases on superhydrophobic (SH) solid surfaces have been so far rarely investigated. In this work the SH surfaces were prepared by a mixed inorganic-organic coating on different substrates and studied in presence of different surface active molecules. Transition between wetting states can be also considered a possible development of these studies based on switching mechanisms.