Wetting of Metamaterial Surfaces

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Wetting plays a major role in many different applications from inkjet printing to antifouling coatings and herbicide treatment [1]. The angle between solid substrate and liquid-vapour interface (i.e. contact angle) is one of the main parameters to reflect the wettability of the solid surface. Superhydrophobicity of a solid surface is characterized by the very large contact angle of water droplets. Such large contact angles are achieved by adding a structure to the chemically hydrophobic, flat solid surface - often mimicking natural surfaces such as Lotus leaf [2]. On a structured surface, the droplet can suspend across the surface features and make a larger angle with the solid as can be seen in Fig. 1a. In such a case, the droplet contact angle depends on the surface fractions of air and solid, and increasing the air fraction increases the contact angle.