Electrochemical goniometry: keystone reactivity at the three-phase boundary

Abstract

Contact angles of liquid, spherical cap droplets immobilised on an electrode surface and bathed by a fluid are important, quantifiable measures of the liquid/fluid interfacial tension. Optical goniometry, even if computer assisted, suffers when the contact angle is 10° or less. In this work, an alternative method of measurement is considered: electrochemical techniques (voltammetry and chronoamperometry), which rely on the transport of material from within the droplet to the conductive surface. As a result of the reactions that take place at the triple phase boundary, these are demonstrated to provide information on the size and the shape of the droplet, including its contact angle, for the cases when the droplets have a redox analyte and either have a supporting electrolyte, or not. The voltammetric behaviour is seen to change from exhaustive, thin film characteristics, to quasi-steady-state signals as the droplet becomes bigger, or the scan rate becomes larger, or diffusion of the redox material inside the droplet becomes slower. One of the surprising outcomes is that there is a zone of planar diffusion only in the case of the supported droplets, with both the droplet size and its contact angle determining whether this is seen at conventional combinations of scan rates and diffusion coefficients. Experimental data are provided which emphasize key features pertaining to the nature of the redox system and illustrate the facile nature of the contact angle estimation process, albeit to within 10% uncertainty.