UCLA

Realizing the dominance of surface tensional forces helps us understand many phenomena in nature and industrial processes where the critical feature size is below a few millimeters. Causing many unfavorable phenomena in engineering practice, a liquid meniscus can also be purposely engineered to produce unmatched properties for useful applications. Surface tension and contact angles are two major parameters describing a meniscus in contact with solid and vapor. We first study the meniscus under different vapor and solid conditions to advance the knowledge of the meniscus behavior. We then show three novel examples of modifying surface conditions to certain microscale details with micro and nano fabrication techniques so that the engineered meniscus shape manifests dramatic improvements that cannot be achieved otherwise.