Eur. Phys. J. E (2016) 39: 12
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2016-16012-y

Regular Article

Wetting of polymers by their solvents

¹ École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI) ParisTech, PSL Research University, Sciences et Ingénierie de la matière Molle, CNRS UMR7615, 10, Rue Vauquelin, F-75231, Paris Cedex 05, France
² Sorbonne-Universités, UPMC Univ. Paris 06, SIMM, 10, Rue Vauquelin, F-75231, Paris Cedex 05, France

^* e-mail: laurence.talini@espci.fr

Received: 17 July 2015
Revised: 2 September 2015
Accepted: 8 September 2015
Published online: 25 February 2016

Abstract

We review the studies on the wetting of soluble polymeric substrates by their solvents, both in the literature and conducted in our group in the past decade. When a droplet of solvent spreads on a soluble polymer layer, its wetting angle can strongly vary with the contact line velocity even at capillary numbers smaller than unity, in contrast to non-soluble substrates. The solvent content in the polymer is a key parameter for the spreading dynamics; that content is set by the initial conditions, but also by the transfers occurring from the droplet to the polymer layer during spreading. We focus on hydrophilic amorphous polymers that are glassy at room temperature, and we discuss the consequences on wetting of the very large changes in the polymer physical properties induced by solvent sorption. We finally present new results on polymers of varying molar masses, and show how they open new perspectives for a better understanding of powder dissolution.