Engineering the geometry of stripe-patterned surfaces toward efficient wettability switching

The ability to control wettability is important for a wide range of technological applications in which precise microfluidic handling is required. It is known that predesigned roughness at a micro- or nano-scale enhances the wetting properties of solid materials giving rise to super-hydrophobic or super-hydrophilic behavior. In this work, we study the dependence of the apparent wettability of a stripe-patterned solid surface on the stripe geometry, utilizing systems level analysis and mesoscopic Lattice-Boltzmann (LB) simulations. Through the computation of both stable and unstable states we are able to determine the energy barriers separating distinct metastable wetting states that correspond to the well-known Cassie and Wenzel states. This way the energy cost for inducing certain wetting transitions is computed and its dependence on geometric features of the surface pattern is explored.