Forced wetting and hydrodynamic assist

Abstract

Wetting is a prerequisite for coating a uniform layer of liquid onto a solid. Wetting failure and air entrainment set the ultimate limit to coating speed. It is well known in the coating art that this limit can be postponed by manipulating the coating flow to generate what has been termed “hydrodynamic assist,” but the underlying mechanism is unclear. Experiments have shown that the conditions that postpone air entrainment also reduce the apparent dynamic contact angle, suggesting a direct link, but how the flow might affect the contact angle remains to be established. Here, we use molecular dynamics to compare the outcome of steady forced wetting with previous results for the spontaneous spreading of liquid drops and apply the molecular-kinetic theory of dynamic wetting to rationalize our findings and place them on a quantitative footing. The forced wetting simulations reveal significant slip at the solid-liquid interface and details of the flow immediately adjacent to the moving contact line. Our results confirm that the local, microscopic contact angle is dependent not simply only on the velocity of wetting but also on the nature of the flow that drives it. In particular, they support an earlier suggestion that during forced wetting, an intense shear stress in the vicinity of the contact line can assist surface tension forces in promoting dynamic wetting, thus reducing the velocity-dependence of the contact angle. Hydrodynamic assist then appears as a natural consequence of wetting that emerges when the contact line is driven by a strong and highly confined flow. Our theoretical approach also provides a self-consistent model of molecular slip at the solid-liquid interface that enables its magnitude to be estimated from dynamic contact angle measurements. In addition, the model predicts how hydrodynamic assist and slip may be influenced by liquid viscosity and solid-liquid interactions.