Related papers: Highly sticky surfaces made by electrospun polymer…
Polymer micro- and nano-fibers, made of organic light-emitting materials with optical gain, show interesting lasing properties. Fibers with diameters from few tens of nm to few microns can be fabricated by electrospinning, a method based on…
Electrospinning technologies for the realization of active polymeric nanomaterials can be easily up-scaled, opening perspectives to industrial exploitation, and due to their versatility they can be employed to finely tailor the size,…
Inspired by the huge droplets attached on cypress tree leaf tips after rain, we find that a bent fibre can hold significantly more water in the corner than a horizontally placed fibre (typically up to three times or more). The maximum…
Evaporation of water droplets on a superhydrophobic substrate, on which the contact line is pinned, is investigated. While previous studies mainly focused on droplets with contact angles smaller than 90^\circ, here we analyze almost the…
The method of formation of nanoparticle aggregates such as high-coverage spherical shells of microspheres or 3-D micro crystals grown in the geometry unaffected by a substrate is described. In the reported experiment, the evaporation of…
We present direct experimental evidence that water droplets can spontaneously penetrate non-wetting capillaries, driven by the action of Laplace pressure due to high droplet curvature. Using high-speed optical imaging, microcapillaries of…
Controlling the motion of non-Newtonian drops on surfaces is crucial for applications ranging from inkjet printing to biomedical devices and food processing. While the macroscopic behavior of viscoelastic drops sliding on tilted hydrophobic…
There is a huge interest in developing super-repellent surfaces for anti-fouling and heat transfer applications. To characterize the wetting properties of such surfaces, the most common approach is to place a millimetric-sized droplet and…
The authors report on the realization of ordered arrays of light-emitting conjugated polymer nanofibers by near-field electrospinning. The fibers, made by poly[2-methoxy-5-(2-ethylhexyloxy)-1,4-phenylenevinylene], have diameters of few…
Self-cleaning surfaces often make use of superhydrophobic coatings that repel water. Here, we report a hydrophobic Si nanospring surface, that effectively suppresses wetting by repelling water droplets. We investigated the dynamic response…
Water drops used as reaction compartments are commonly immobilized on hydrophilic areas bordered by hydrophobic areas. For many applications, such as the trapping of non-adherent cells, it is desirable to exploit the inertness and the…
As new manufacturing methods enable manufacturing of microstructured surfaces with varying structure geometries, questions remain on some effects on the wetting behavior and the resulting apparent contact angles. In this study, we report…
Advancing open atmosphere printing technologies to produce features in the nanoscale range has important and broad applications ranging from electronics, to photonics, plasmonics and biology. Recently an electrohydrodynamic printing regime…
We present a versatile setup for investigating the nanofluidic behavior of nanoparticles as a function of the gap distance between two confining surfaces. The setup is designed as an open system which operates with small amounts of…
Understanding how water wets graphene is critical for predicting and controlling its behaviour in nanofluidic, sensing, and energy applications. A key measure of wetting is the contact angle made by a liquid droplet against the surface, yet…
Particles that can be trapped in optical tweezers range from tens of microns down to tens of nanometres in size. Interestingly, this size range includes large macromolecules. We show experimentally, in agreement with theoretical…
Adhesion requires molecular contact, and natural adhesives employ mechanical gradients to achieve complete (conformal) contact to maximize adhesion. Intuitively, one expects that the higher the modulus of the top layer, the lower will be…
Electrospinning in controlled nitrogen atmosphere is developed for the realization of active polymer nanofibers. Fibers electrospun under controlled atmospheric conditions are found to be smoother and more uniform than samples realized by…
Control of the swelling, chemical functionalization, and adhesivity of hydrogels are finding new applications in a wide range of material systems. We investigate experimentally the effect of adsorbed particles on hydrogels on the depinning…
Pattern formation induced by wrinkling is a very common phenomenon exhibited in soft-matter substrates. In all these systems wrinkles develop in presence of compressively stressed thin films lying on compliant substrates. Here we…