Biological applications of kinetics of wetting and spreading

Abstract

Wetting and spreading kinetics of biological fluids has gained a substantial interest recently. The importance of these fluids in our lives has driven the pace of publications. Globally scientists have ever growing interest in understanding wetting phenomena due to its vast applications in biological fluids. It is impractical to review extremely large number of publications in the field of kinetics of complex biological fluids and cosmetic solutions on diverse surfaces. Therefore, biological and cosmetic applications of wetting and spreading dynamics are considered in the following areas: (i) Spreading of Newtonian liquids in the case of non-porous and porous substrates. It is shown that the spreading kinetics of a Newtonian droplet on non-porous and porous substrate can be defined through theoretical relations for droplet base radius on time, which agree well with the experimental results; (ii) Spreading of blood over porous substrates. It is shown that blood, which has a complex non-Newtonian rheology, can be successfully modelled with the help of simple power-law model for shear-thinning non-Newtonian liquids; (iii) Simultaneous spreading and evaporation kinetics of blood. This part enlightens different underlying mechanisms present in the wetting, spreading, evaporation and dried pattern formation of the blood droplets on solid substrates; (iv) Spreading over hair. In this part the wetting of hair tresses by aqueous solutions of two widely used by industry commercially available polymers, AculynTM 22 and AculynTM 33, are discussed. The influence of non-Newtonian rheology of these polymer solutions on the drainage of foams produced from these solutions is also briefly discussed.