Automation of Non-Contact Wettability Assessment System

Abstract

Surface wettability is one of most important indexes for understanding material characteristics, especially physico-chemical properties such as hydrophilicity and water repellency. Recently, non-contact wettability assessment by monitoring the behavior of liquid covering a sample during jet-flow application to the liquid has been proposed. This method is applicable to the in-liquid assessment of high wettability materials such as cultured cells in a liquid culture medium. Because liquid-squeezed area is the main index of surface wettability, this method is supposed to be compatible with image instrumentation without any contact between sample surface and instruments excluding jet-flow. When the flow is dirty, the contamination of particles (e.g. microorganisms, virus, and aerosols) into cell culture system may occurs. This study developed an automated non-contact wettability assessment system with clean jet-flow application, image processing, and a motorized alignment device.