Quantitative assessment of interfacial forces between two rough surfaces and its implications for anti-adhesion membrane fabrication

Abstract

Abstract The super anti-adhesion ability of lotus leaf inspires to fabricate anti-adhesion membranes. To achieve this goal, a novel approach to quantify the interfacial forces between a randomly rough particle and membranes with special surface morphology, was developed. In this study, the rough surfaces of foulant particle and membrane were firstly modeled by the modified two-variable Weierstrass-Mandelbrot (WM) function and a rigorous mathematical function, respectively. Thereafter, quantification approach based on the combination of surface element integration (SEI) method and composite Simpson’s rule was deduced. This approach was verified to be feasible to quantify the interfacial forces between a rough particle and a rough flat surface. By using this novel approach, effects of scaled amplitude and water contact angle of membrane surface on interfacial forces were investigated. It was found that, the attractive forces between foulants and membrane surface would rather weaker or even become repulsive with increase in size of asperities and surface hydrophilicity, well explaining the phenomenon regarding the super anti-adhesion ability of lotus leaf. This study gives important implications for fabrication of anti-adhesion membranes.