Wettability transparency and the quasiuniversal relationship between hydrodynamic slip and contact angle

The universality of the scaling laws that correlate the hydrodynamic slip length and static contact angle was investigated by introducing the concept of the wettability transparency of graphene-coated surfaces. Equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations of droplet wettability for Si(111), Si(100), and graphene-coated silicon surfaces were performed to determine the conditions required to obtain similar contact angles between bare and graphene-coated surfaces (wettability transparency). The hydrodynamic slip length was determined by means of equilibrium calculations for silicon and graphene-coated silicon nanochannels. The results indicate that the slip-wettability scaling laws can be used to describe the slip behavior of the bare silicon nanochannels in general terms; however, clear departures from a general universal description were observed for hydrophobic conditions. In addition, a significant difference in the hydrodynamic slippage was observed under wettability transparency conditions. Alternatively, the hydrodynamic boundary condition for silicon and graphene-coated silicon nanochannels was more accurately predicted by observing the density depletion length, posing this parameter as a better alternative than the contact angle to correlate with the slip length.