Surface hydrophobicity of slippery zones in the pitchers of two Nepenthes species and a hybrid

Scientific Reports
Lixin Wang, Qiang Zhou

Abstract

To investigate the hydrophobicity of slippery zones, static contact angle measurement and microstructure observation of slippery surfaces from two Nepenthes species and a hybrid were conducted. Marginally different static contact angles were observed, as the smallest (133.83°) and greatest (143.63°) values were recorded for the N. alata and N. miranda respectively, and the median value (140.40°) was presented for the N. khasiana. The slippery zones under investigation exhibited rather similar surface morphologies, but different structural dimensions. These findings probably suggest that the geometrical dimensions of surface architecture exert primary effects on differences in the hydrophobicity of the slippery zone. Based on the Wenzel and Cassie-Baxter equations, models were proposed to analyze the manner in which geometrical dimensions affect the hydrophobicity of the slippery surfaces. The results of our analysis demonstrated that the different structural dimensions of lunate cells and wax platelets make the slippery zones present different real area of the rough surface and thereby generate somewhat distinguishable hydrophobicity. The results support a supplementary interpretation of surface hydrophobicity in plant leaves, ...Continue Reading

References

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Sep 2, 2014·Materials Science & Engineering. C, Materials for Biological Applications·Tianchi WangChingping Wong

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Citations

Mar 31, 2015·Acta Biomaterialia·Bernhard Schuster, Uwe B Sleytr
Jan 20, 2021·Medical Engineering & Physics·Yahui HuWeihua Fu

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
force measurements
AFM

Software Mentioned

CAST
Scanning Probe Image Processor
ImageJ

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