TEMPERATURE INFLUENCES ON SURFACE ENERGETIC PARAMETERS EVALUATED AT SOLID LIQUID INTERFACES

The adhesive events experienced by a solid material upon contact with a biofluid are related to measurable surface properties of the solid; consequently, surface properties have been suggested to provide direction for the prediction and control of biofluid behavior at interfaces. With respect to biofilm formation at elevated temperatures, knowledge of temperature influences on such properties would serve to assist the development of predictive models that incorporate a surface‐related influence. In this work, surface energetic parameters for a variety of engineering materials were determined at temperatures of 7–80°C using contact angle analysis with a modified sessile drop technique. Specifically, a linear relationship between the polar component of the work of adhesion and the polar component of liquid surface tension, observed for each material, was characterized by its slope and intercept at each temperature. The value of the slope was observed to decrease linearly with temperature. The negative values of the ordinate intercept were observed to increase in magnitude with temperature for low‐energy surfaces, but did not change uniformly for solids of higher surface energy. The polar component of the work required to remove water from a surface, observed to decrease with decreasing polar character of a solid at a given temperature, was observed to decrease with increasing temperature. The observed temperature effects indicate a need to account for this influence in the development of models describing biofluid–contact surface interactions at temperatures outside of the ambient range. Copyright © 1990 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.