Issue |
Int. J. Metrol. Qual. Eng.
Volume 16, 2025
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 2 | |
Number of page(s) | 13 | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/ijmqe/2024021 | |
Published online | 20 January 2025 |
Research Article
Measurement of wettability and surface roughness for metrology and quality control in microfluidics
1
Danish Technological Institute (DTI), 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
2
Laboratoire National de Métrologie et d'Essais (LNE), 78190 Trappes, France
3
Centre Technique des Industries Aérauliques Et Thermiques (CETIAT), 69100 Villeurbanne, France
4
IMT Masken und Teilungen AG (IMTAG), 8606 Greifensee, Switzerland
5
Instituto Português da Qualidade (IPQ), 2829-513 Caparica, Portugal
* Corresponding author: tsda@dti.dk
Received:
25
April
2024
Accepted:
16
December
2024
Microfluidics is a rapidly growing technology with applications in biochemistry and life sciences. To support the ongoing growth there is a need for common metrology, quality control, and standardisation. Here measurements of wettability and surface roughness can contribute, and these quantities affect flow characteristics of devices, bonding processes in manufacturing, and special microfluidic mechanisms such as droplet formation and spreading of fluids on surfaces. To quantify wettability, an optical laboratory setup was used to measure liquid drop contact angles of three liquids on a microfluidic surface. To further quantify wettability, the Owens, Wendt, Rabel, and Kaelble model was applied to contact angle measurements to determine the total surface free energy. To quantify surface roughness, atomic force microscopy and stylus profilometry measured area roughness parameter and profile roughness parameter for four samples of microfluidic surfaces. The wettability methods successfully demonstrated measurements of contact angles, and these methods were applied to determine a value for the total surface free energy. AFM and stylus profilometry successfully determined surface roughness parameters, and the determined values agreed with the expected for the material. In conclusion, the demonstrated methods can contribute to metrology, quality control and standardisation in microfluidics.
Key words: Microfluidics / wettability / surface roughness / metrology / quality control / standardisation
© T.S. Daugbjerg et al., Published by EDP Sciences, 2025
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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