Dielectrowetting for dewetting

The behaviour of liquid droplets on surfaces plays a fundamental role in both domestic and industrial environments, from the application of paint onto a wall to the dispersal of pesticides. Each of these processes benefits from the controllability of the wetting properties of both the surfaces and droplets involved in the system.

While wetting properties can be controlled through alterations to surface chemistry or topology; methods to controllably modify the wetting properties of a surface offer many advantages over a permanent modification approach. Interface-localised liquid dielectrophoresis (i.e. dielectrowetting) is a new approach in reversibly controlling the wetting behaviour of surfaces, quite literally at the push of a button.

In this seminar, I will present some fundamentals of wetting and introduce the technique of dielectrowetting before covering how dielectrowetting can be used in studying the process of dewetting in novel and complex geometries.