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Repulsion-Based Model for Contact Angle Saturation in Electrowetting

Research Authors
Hassan A. Abdellah Ali
Hany A. Mohamed
M. Abdelgawad
Research Year
2015
Research Journal
Biomicrofluidics
Research Publisher
The American Institute of Physics
Research Vol
Vol. 9
Research Rank
1
Research_Pages
014115
Research Website
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/bmf/9/1/10.1063/1.4907977
Research Abstract

We introduce a new model for contact angle saturation phenomenon in electrowetting on dielectric systems. This new model attributes contact angle saturation to repulsion between trapped charges on the cap and base surfaces of the droplet in the vicinity of the three-phase contact line, which prevents these surfaces from converging during contact angle reduction. This repulsion-based saturation is similar to repulsion between charges accumulated on the surfaces of conducting droplets which causes the well known Coulombic fission and Taylor cone formation phenomena. In our model, both the droplet and dielectric coating were treated as lossy dielectric media (i.e., having finite electrical conductivities and permittivities) contrary to the more common assumption of a perfectly conducting droplet and perfectly insulating dielectric. We used theoretical analysis and numerical simulations to find actual charge distribution on droplet surface, calculate repulsion energy, and minimize energy of the total system as a function of droplet contact angle. Resulting saturation curves were in good agreement with previously reported experimental results. We used this proposed model to predict effect of changing liquid properties, such as electrical conductivity, and system parameters, such as thickness of the dielectric layer, on the saturation angle, which also matched experimental results.