UC San Diego

Understanding the wetting property of rough surface is critical in guiding droplets and novel superhydrophobic surface design. The Cassie-Baxter model and Wenzel model are always used to describe the totally non-wetting and completely wetting states, however, there were few discussions about the intermediate state. Through measuring the contact angles of groove patterned surfaces in different groove orientations, the anisotropic wetting properties of groove patterned superhydrophobic surface were investigated. The degree of water penetration into the grooves was experimentally observed and it was found that the degree of water penetration was different with groove orientations, which would affect the corresponding contact angle. Besides guiding droplets, superhydrophobic surfaces are also very important in microfluidic due to their ability to generate fluid slip and flow enhancement. After a deeper understanding

of the wetting property of groove patterned superhydrophobic surface, I further investigated its important role in microfluidics. In this dissertation, I mainly focus on electrokinetics on groove patterned surface and liquid-filled slippery surfaces, a new kind of surface by filling low surface tension oil into the interstices of groove patterned surfaces. I experimentally measured the streaming potential on flat parylene surface, air-filled groove patterned surface and liquid-filled surfaces and compared their effects in streaming potential enhancement. The liquid-filled surfaces were shown to be able to enhance the generated streaming potential due to its slippery property and liquid-oil interface charges. As the electrokinetic on liquid-filled surfaces is a new phenomenon, the underlying physics is still not clear. I further investigated the influences of filled oil properties and groove orientation on streaming potentials and fluid slip. Oils with different densities, viscosities, dielectric constant, conductivities and surface tensions were filled into the interstices of groove patterned surfaces to make different types of liquid-filled surfaces. The streaming potentials on liquid-filled surfaces with different oils were experimentally measured. An empirical relationship between streaming potential and oil properties was found and the effects of electrical properties, such as interface charge density and dielectric constant of filled oil, on fluid slip were also studied. Finally, the groove orientation was varied to study the tensorial effects on streaming potential. Through both streaming potential measurement and theoretical analysis, it was found that the streaming potential at 45° was always smaller than the arithmetic mean of those at 0° and 90°, and the pressure gradient in the transvers direction generated by tensorial effects was important in the streaming potential modification. My work will be important in guiding droplets, flow patterning, lab-on-chip devices and the development of electrokientic based power sources.