8th Liquid Matter Conference September 6-10, 2011 Wien, Austria ...

P7.6Thu 811:10-14:00Complete wetting of patterned elastic substratesNelson Bernardino 1 and Siegfried Dietrich 21 Centro de Física Teórica e Computacional, Instituto de Investigação Interdisciplinar,Av. Prof. Gama Pinto, 2 70569, Lisboa, Portugal2 Max Planck Institute for Metals Research, Stuttgart, GermanySubstrate geometry influences the wetting properties of solids (e.g., changing the effective contactangle). For an elastic substrate, the wetting of the substrate by a liquid changes the geometry, dueto surface tension. In this work we study what happens when wetting changes geometry and thisfeedbacks into the wetting properties. We look into adsorption of a substrate supporting an array ofparallel, vertical plates which can tilt elastically. The adsorbed liquid tilts the plates, inducing clustering,and thus modifies the substrate geometry. In turn, this change in geometry alters the wettingproperties of the substrate and, consequently, the adsorption of liquid. This geometry-wetting feedbackloop leads to stepped adsorption isotherms with each step corresponding to an abrupt changein the substrate geometry. We discuss how this can be used for constructing substrates with tunablewetting and adsorption properties.6