Does surface roughness amplify wetting?

Any solid surface is intrinsically rough on the microscopic scale. In this paper, we study the effect of this roughness on the wetting properties of hydrophilic substrates. Macroscopic arguments, such as those leading to the well-known Wenzel's law, predict that surface roughness should amplify the wetting properties of such adsorbents. We use a fundamental measure density functional theory to demonstrate the opposite effect from roughness for microscopically corrugated surfaces, i.e., wetting is hindered. Based on three independent analyses we show that microscopic surface corrugation increases the wetting temperature or even makes the surface hydrophobic. Since for macroscopically corrugated surfaces the solid texture does indeed amplify wetting there must exist a crossover between two length-scale regimes that are distinguished by opposite response on surface roughening. This demonstrates how deceptive can be efforts to extend the thermodynamical laws beyond their macroscopic territory.