Wetting Ridge Growth Dynamics on Textured Lubricant-Infused Surfaces

Understanding droplet-surface interactions has broad implications in microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip devices. In contrast to droplets on conventional textured air-filled superhydrophobic surfaces, water droplets on state-of-the-art lubricant-infused surfaces are accompanied by an axisymmetric annular wetting ridge, the source and nature of which are not clearly established to date. Generally, the imbalance of interfacial forces at the contact line is believed to play a pivotal role in accumulating the lubricant oil near the droplet base to form the axisymmetric wetting ridge. In this study, we experimentally characterize and model the wetting ridge that plays a crucial role in droplet mobility. We developed a geometry-based analytical model of the steady-state wetting ridge shape that is validated by using experiments and numerical simulations. Our wetting ridge model shows that at steady state (1) the radius of the wetting ridge is ≈30% higher than the droplet radius, (2) the wetting ridge rises halfway to the droplet radius, (3) the volume of the wetting ridge is half (≈50%) of the droplet volume, and (4) the wetting ridge shape does not depend on the oil viscosity used for impregnation. The insights gained from this work improve our state-of-the-art mechanistic understanding of the wetting ridge dynamics.