Using sharp transitions in contact angle hysteresis to move, deflect, and sort droplets on a superhydrophobic surface

In order to make an effective droplet-based microfluidic device, one must be able to precisely control a number of key processes including droplet positioning, motion, coalescence, mixing, and sorting. In a typical three-dimensional device, these processes are well understood. However, for planar or open microfluidic devices, many of these processes have yet to be demonstrated. In this paper, a series of superhydrophobic surfaces created by sanding Teflon are used as the microfluidics platform. The superhydrophobic surfaces used in this study all have advancing contact angles of 150 degrees but have contact angle hysteresis that were varied smoothly from 3 degrees to 30 degrees as the grit size of the sandpaper is changed. Drop motion was initiated by placing the surface on an inclined plane. To deflect and move droplets along the surface, single and multiple transition lines in receding contact angle were created by spatially varying the surface roughness of the Teflon. The degree of droplet deflection was studied as a function of droplet size, droplet speed, and the angle that the transition line in contact angle hysteresis made with the principle direction of droplet motion. Droplet deflections across a single transition as large as 140% the droplet diameter were observed. The droplet deflection was found to increase with increasing difference in contact angle hysteresis across the transition and increasing transition angles up to about 40 degrees. The largest deflections were observed over a very narrow range of droplet velocities corresponding to a range in Weber numbers between 0.1 and 0.2. This narrow range in Weber number suggests that transitions in receding contact angle can be used to sort drops based on velocity, size or wetting properties with a strong degree of selectivity. The direction of deflection was observed to change depending on whether the drops transitioned from a region of low to high or high to low contact angle hysteresis. In a transition from low to high hysteresis, a large portion of the drop's kinetic energy is converted into interfacial energy as the receding contact line of the drop is deformed. Alternatively, a transition from high to low hysteresis results in some of the drop's interfacial energy converted into kinetic energy as the deformation of the droplet is reduced. The result is either a reduction or increase in the droplet's velocity normal to the line of transition depending on the sign of the transition in contact angle hysteresis. Finally, single and multiple stripes of different contact angle hysteresis are also shown to be effective at deflecting droplets. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4723866]