We investigate the wetting properties of random nanostructured surfaces, with particular attention devoted to the phenomenon of contact angle hysteresis. For this purpose, solid substrates were initially tailored at a nanometric scale by using swift heavy ion irradiation which produced a random distribution of defects. We characterize the wetting properties of water on these heterogeneous surfaces by an average spreading parameter and by the contact angle hysteresis. For weak values of the areal density of defects ${\phi }_d,$ the hysteresis grows linearly with ${\phi }_d,$ indicating that the defects pin the contact line individually. However, at higher values of ${\phi }_d,$ collective pinning effects appear and the hysteresis decreases with increasing ${\phi }_d.$ We show that in the linear regime our experimental results are in good quantitative agreement with theoretical predictions for contact angle hysteresis induced by a single isolated defect on a solid surface.

• Received 7 March 2002

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.67.031604