Abstract
Determining the contact angle of a liquid on a solid surface is a simple method to assess the surface wettability. The most common method to measure the contact angle of a liquid consists of capturing the profile of a sessile drop of a few microliters on the surface using an optical system. Currently, this is a widely used technique to analyze wettability both in researched materials and in products of multiple technological fields. However, the drop dispensed by a traditional macroscopic contact angle meter is too big to assess the wettability properties of individual topographical features and/or chemical patterns at the micro/nanoscale. Recently, contact angle meters that can discharge drops that are microscopic, with volumes in the range of 1 × 10−3 to 10−5 μL have been developed. The novel microscopic contact angle meter uses a pneumatic injection system to discharge the drop of the liquid through a capillary of a few micrometers of internal diameter and a high-resolution ultrafast digital camera.
We have tested different biosurfaces – microimprinted polymers for biosensors, calcium-phosphate cements with different topographical microfeatures, orthodontic wires – and assessed the potential applicability in the field in comparison with the conventional macroscopic contact angle meters.
This protocol describes the basic tasks needed to test wettability on biosurfaces with a microscopic contact angle meter. The focus of the protocol is on the challenging methodological steps and those that differentiate the use of this equipment to the use of a traditional macroscopic contact angle meter.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Young, T. (1805) An Essay on the Cohesion of Fluids Phil Trans Roy Soc London 95, 65–87.
Good, J.R., and van Oss, C.J. (1992) The Modern Theory of Contact Angles and the Hydrogen Bond Components of Surface Energies. In: Schraeder, M.E., and Loeb, G.I., eds. Modern Approaches to Wettability. Theory and Applications; New York and London: Plenum Press, 1–28.
Butt, H.J., Graf, K., and Kappl, M. (2004) Contact angle phenomena and wetting. In: Physics and Chemistry of Interfaces; Weinheim: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 125–52.
Ratner, B.D. (2004) Surface Properties and Surface Characterization of Materials. In: Ratber, B.D., Hoffman, A.S., Schoen, F.J., and Lemons, J.E., eds. Biomaterials Science. An Introduction to Materials in Medicine; San Diego, CA: Elsevier Academic Press, 40–58.
Michiardi, A., Aparicio, C. Ratner, B., Planell, J.A., and Gil, F.J. (2007) The influence of surface energy on competitive protein adsorption on oxidized NiTi surfaces Biomaterials 28, 586–94.
Pegueroles, M., Aparicio, C., Bosio, M., Engel, E., Gil, F.J., Planell, J.A., and Altankov, G. (2010) Spatial Organization of Osteoblast Fibronectin-Matrix on Titanium Surface – Effects of Roughness, Chemical Heterogeneity, and Surface Free Energy Acta Biomaterialia 6, 291–301.
Straumann Holding AH, SLActive – the third generation in implant surface technology http://www.straumann.com/ci_ch_presskit_slactive_ids07.pdf (accessed October 2010).
Matsuda, N., Shimizu, T., Yamato, M., and Okano, T. (2007) Tissue Engineering Based on Cell Sheet Technology Adv Mater 19, 3089–99.
Chu, K.-H., Xiao, R., and Wang, E.N. (2010) Uni-directional liquid spreading on asymmetric nanostructured surfaces Nature Mater 9, 413–7.
Chiou, N.-R., Lu, C., Guan, J., Lee, L.J., and Epstein, A.J. (2007) Growth and alignment of polyaniline nanofibres with superhydrophobic, superhydrophilic and other properties Nature Nanotech 2, 354 – 57.
Mata, A., Hsu, L., Capito, R., Aparicio, C., Henrikson, K., and Stupp, S.I. (2009) Micropatterning of bioactive self-assembling gels Soft Matter 5, 1228–36.
Hannachi, E., Itoga, K., Kumashiro, Y., Kobayashi, J., Yamato, J., and Okano, T. (2009) Fabrication of transferable micropatterned-co-cultured cell sheets with microcontact printing Biomaterials 30, 5427–32.
Maritines, E., Seunarine, K., Morgan, H., Gadegaard, N., Wilkinson, C.D.W., and Riehle, M.O. (2005) Superhydrophobicity and superhydrophilicity of regular nanopatterns. Nano Lett 5, 2097–130.
Dupuis, A., Leopoldes, J., Bucknall, D. G., and Yeomans, J. M. (2005) Control of drop positioning using chemical patterning Appl Phys Lett 87, 024103.
Masahashi, N., Mizukoshi, Y., Semboshi, S., and Ohtsu, N. (1998) Superhydrophilicity of rutile TiO2 prepared by anodic oxidation in high concentration sulfuric acid electrolyte Chem Letters 37, 1126–7.
Taylor, M, Urquhart, A.J., Zelzer, M., Davies, M.C., and Alexander, M.R. (2007) Picoliter Water Contact Angle Measurement on Polymers Langmuir 23, 6875–8.
Erbil, H.Y.(1997) Surface Tension of Polymers. In: Birdi, K.S., ed. Handbook of Surface and Colloid Chemistry; Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 259–306.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Aparicio, C., Maazouz, Y., Yang, D. (2012). Measuring Wettability of Biosurfaces at the Microscale. In: Navarro, M., Planell, J. (eds) Nanotechnology in Regenerative Medicine. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 811. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-61779-388-2_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-61779-388-2_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana Press
Print ISBN: 978-1-61779-387-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-61779-388-2
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols