Collembola cuticles and the three-phase line tension

• Håkon Gundersen,
• Hans Petter Leinaas and
• Christian Thaulow

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2017, 8, 1714–1722, doi:10.3762/bjnano.8.172

• experiment with a fluorescent dye revealed the extent of wetting on exposed surface structures. Using simple wetting models to describe the composite wetting of the cuticular surface structures results in underestimating the contact angles of water. Including the three-phase line tension allows for a

• . clavatus does not have overhanging surface structures. This large change in observed contact angles can be explained with a modest change of the three-phase line tension. Keywords: springtails (Collembola); superhydrophobicity; three-phase line tension; Introduction Collembola, a group of small

• characteristics for the Collembola species Cryptopygus clavatus [6]. The three-phase line tension (λ), or “line tension” for short, is an energy term associated with the line of contact between three phases (most commonly solid, water and air) in partially wetted systems [17]. In the case of a droplet of liquid