Using the fact that wetting is contact line dependent

Two series of experiments, both involving contact line pinning, are reported that were designed using the contact line perspective of wetting and require this perspective to explain the observed results. Perspectives based on contact areas, for example, Wenzel's and Cassie's, are not useful in either of these experimental situations. In the first type of experiment described, sessile water drops were pinned on low contact angle hysteresis surfaces using 40 different shape/size lithographed hydrophilic features. Hydrophilic arcs (sections of circles), short wedges (pointed to the center of the circle), long wedges (pointed to the opposite side of the circle), and the upper outlines of the short and long wedges were prepared and studied. These features were based on circles with diameters of 4 and 6 mm and arcs of 30°, 60°, 90°, and 120°. The volume of water that could be pinned depends on the linear shape of the portion of the feature that interacts with the receding contact line and not on the feature area. In the second type of experiment, thin hydrophilic contact lines were used to support films of water (puddles and kinetically trapped thin films) on water-repellent surfaces and used to control the shape (both 2D and 3D) of these thin films and puddles. Elongated water puddles, 60 mm long and 4 mm wide, were prepared using contact line patterns with line widths of 500, 250, and 100 μm. Curved puddles, geometric shapes, letters of the English alphabet, and puddles with variable liquid thicknesses (heights) were also prepared.