Capillary rise of liquids over a microstructured solid surface.
The location of the triple line as a function of time has been recorded for a series of organic liquids, with various surface tension to viscosity ratios, wicking upward a rough Cu(6)Sn(5)/Cu intermetallic (IMC) substrate. The complex topographical features of such an IMC rough surface are characterized by surface porosity and surface roughness. A theoretical model for wicking upward a rough surface has been established by treating the rough IMC surface as a two-dimensional porous medium featuring a network of open microtriangular grooves. The model is verified against experimental data. The study confirms that the kinetics of capillary rise of organic liquids in a nonreactive flow regime over a porous surface having arbitrary but uniformly distributed topographical features involves (i) surface topography metrics (i.e., permeability, tortuosity/porosity, and geometry of the microchannel cross section); (ii) wicking features (i.e., contact angle and filling factor); and (iii) physical properties of liquids (i.e., surface tension and viscosity). An excellent agreement between theoretical predictions and experimentally obtained data proves, for a selected filling factor η, validity of the analytically established model. Scaled data sets show that, for a given rough surface topography, (i) wicking kinetics of considered liquids depend on properties of liquids, that is, surface tension to viscosity ratios and contact angles; (ii) the filling factor for all tested liquids is an invariant, offering good prediction within the range of ~0.9-1.0. The distance of the wicking front versus square root of time relationship was well established throughout the whole considered wicking evolution time.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506, USA.
Wen
W
Liu
Yulong
Y
Li
Yuguang
Y
Cai
Dusan P
DP
Sekulic