The wetting of steel, DLC coatings, ceramics and polymers with oils and water: The importance and correlations of surface energy, surface tension, contact angle and spreading

The importance of wetting is becoming increasingly obvious and its control is inevitable in many engineering applications, including tribology and interface nanotechnology. However, the relations between the key parameters affecting surface–liquid wetting behaviour under realistic conditions are not very well understood, especially for typical engineering materials and lubricants (oils), often leading to exceptions and contradictions, which...