Detailed Characterization of the Effect of Application of Commercially Available Surface Treatment Agents on Textile Wetting Behavior

The change in the wetting behavior of a standard commercially available textile material in response to surface treatment has been thoroughly characterized with conventional laboratory measurement techniques. The characterization was carried out by taking a series of contact angle measurements that allowed for the determination of the corresponding shift in substrate surface energy as a result of the applied treatment. The collected surface energy values were expressed in terms of the spreading parameter S, which was used to describe phase behavior at the substrate/droplet interface. However, these results showed that the use of a coarse parameter S, or even the work of adhesion ( W a ) and the work of cohesion ( W c ) parameters alone did not adequately account for the observed wetting behavior. A proper description of droplet formation on substrate surface was provided only when the interfacial interaction was examined at a more detailed level by involving the individual dispersive ( σ l d , σ s d ) and polar ( σ l p , σ s p ) surface energy components of both the solid and the wetting liquid. The methodology for characterization of interactions between a textile substrate coated with various surface active agents and several functional fluids have been developed. Several practical examples of how this methodology can be applied to describe the substrate surface treatment and the resulting wetting behavior are described herein.