Soft Matter and Complex Systems Seminar

Pinning of liquid droplets on solid substrates is ubiquitous and plays an essential role in many applications, especially in various areas such as microfluidics and biology. In some cases, this phenomenon can offer new possibilities for technological exploitation, while in other cases it can pose challenges. In this talk, I will discuss the details of pinning and depinning processes in the case of liquid droplets on solid substrates and possible ways of exploitation. Then, I will present our results and analysis on the rugotaxis phenomenon, that is, the spontaneous motion of a fluid onto wavy substrates with gradient in the wavelength, and discuss the role of pinning. Our analysis is based on molecular dynamics simulations of a coarse-grained model.