Determination of the surface tension of microporous membranes using contact angle measurements

In this paper, a new method of determining the surface tension of the solid material that a microporous membrane is made from is introduced. The method is based on the well known determination of the so-called contact angle that is formed on the solid/liquid/gaseous three phase line. A nonideal state of the solid phase leads to a deviation of the contact angle that can be observed experimentally from the equilibrium angle that arises from the thermodynamically state of lowest energy, as it must be used to calculate the solid surface tension via the Young equation. The deviation caused from the porous structure of the solid material will be taken into account in this work. Doing so, we derived an equation that connects the surface porosity, the measured contact angle, and the equilibrium contact angle. Using this equation, the measured and therefore deviated contact angles can be corrected for the porosity of the solid material, yielding the contact angle observable on a surface made from the same but nonporous material. The equation derived was tested on different microporous membranes made from expanded poly(tetrafluoroethylene). The surface porosity needed was determined using scanning electron microscopy followed by computerized image analysis. (C) 1997 Academic Press.