Article: Contact angle measurement techniques on micro-patterned surfaces: a comparative analysis Journal: International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics (IJCVR) 2017 Vol.7 No.1/2 pp.148 - 159 Abstract: The study of micro-nano patterned surfaces has become a key area in the last few years. While the principal reason behind this interest is the wide range of applications of these surfaces; adhesion and wetting studies also have turned into important areas of research. This is especially important in applications such as biomimetic surfaces, lab-on-chip devices, etc. The study of the contact angle and surface energy is therefore both interesting and crucial. In this paper, an attempt is made to compute the contact angle of various substrates using four different methods. Apart from the traditional half angle method and goniometry which are quite well-known, image processing methods based on curve fitting and Hough transforms which have been developed by the authors have been considered for this comparative analysis. In this paper, the Hough transforms-based technique has been discussed in detail. While it is difficult to declare any one technique as the universally best, the pros and cons of all the four algorithms have been discussed in the results section. The algorithms were tested on micro-patterned surfaces fabricated over three different materials: poly dimethyl siloxane (PDMS), polystyrene and acrylic using laser. Inderscience Publishers - linking academia, business and industry through research

Title: Contact angle measurement techniques on micro-patterned surfaces: a comparative analysis

Authors: Aneissha Chebolu; Nagahanumaiah

Addresses: Micro Systems Technology Laboratory, CSIR-Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute, Durgapur, India ' Micro Systems Technology Laboratory, CSIR-Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute, Durgapur, India

Abstract: The study of micro-nano patterned surfaces has become a key area in the last few years. While the principal reason behind this interest is the wide range of applications of these surfaces; adhesion and wetting studies also have turned into important areas of research. This is especially important in applications such as biomimetic surfaces, lab-on-chip devices, etc. The study of the contact angle and surface energy is therefore both interesting and crucial. In this paper, an attempt is made to compute the contact angle of various substrates using four different methods. Apart from the traditional half angle method and goniometry which are quite well-known, image processing methods based on curve fitting and Hough transforms which have been developed by the authors have been considered for this comparative analysis. In this paper, the Hough transforms-based technique has been discussed in detail. While it is difficult to declare any one technique as the universally best, the pros and cons of all the four algorithms have been discussed in the results section. The algorithms were tested on micro-patterned surfaces fabricated over three different materials: poly dimethyl siloxane (PDMS), polystyrene and acrylic using laser.

Keywords: contact angle measurement; image processing; micro-patterned surfaces; substrates; Hough transforms; poly dimethyl siloxane; PDMS; polystyrene; acrylic; surface patterns.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCVR.2017.081245

International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics, 2017 Vol.7 No.1/2, pp.148 - 159

Received: 03 Nov 2014
Accepted: 04 Jun 2015
Published online: 01 Jan 2017 *

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Title: Contact angle measurement techniques on micro-patterned surfaces: a comparative analysis

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