Study of the new polymer coatings exhibiting hydrophobic / hydrophilic interactions

In the new materials technology, conductive polymers (CP) are used to manufacture coating layers for anions and cations exchange with the base material and hydrophobic to hydrophilic interactions. A simulation strategy was developed in order to determine the contact angle (CA) of a liquid droplet on a conductive polymer layer with roughness. The analyzing method is valuable both to hydrophobic and hydrophilic polymers and illustrates the CA dependence on different parameters like roughness degree of the conductive polymer layer, droplet radius or surface tension of the fluid. The method was tested for the new CP composites reported in literature and considers the complex structure of each material variant. The illustrated dependences allow us to consider the available CP variant and its working parameters for a specific application, either a hydrophobic or a hydrophilic layer is necessary.