EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Increase of wettability and interfacial tension modification are not only present in advanced material’s technology, but also in biological tissues, such as the pulmonary surfactant formed by alveolar cells. Regarding human technology, the most common approaches are the use of chemical surfactants such as soap, temperature increase and surface treatments (coatings and texturing). During the last few years, the state of the art has demonstrated that high frequency vibration can also decrease the contact angle between solid and liquid phases. This approach is based on mechanical principles and it is unique as the contact angle can be controlled by easily tunning the sound amplitude. However, the novelty and the lack of scientific knowledge of the phenomena keeps the technology still under research. On the one hand, the present work sheds light on the physical understanding of how vibration modifies the wettability properties between different materials and phases. A thermodynamical model has been developed and validated for different fluids and solid substrates. On the other hand, an energetical comparison has been experimentally done against traditional methods, demonstrating that the high frequency vibrations do not only lead to the controllable wettability, but also to an extremely efficient process from the energetic and environmental point of view.