I wanted to understand the surface energy of my active material. Probably, the degree of wet-ability is depends on the surface energy of the active material.Eventually, the high surface energy material would absorb more electrolyte than the lower one. How could we understand this practically?
You can measures surface energy in many ways, for example using Kelvin Probe Microscopy that is great in electrochemical environment. Also you can perform electrochemical impedance spectroscopy that can tell you about the surface states in the electrolyte/electrode interface. Electrochemical Tunneling Microscopy could tell you about LDOS in the same interface.
Examples can be found in these references:
dx.doi.org/10.1021/jp3023937 | J. Phys. Chem. C 2012, 116, 13524−13535
10.1021/jp805915a
Also, performing contact angle measurements without a sophisticated equipment can be done by simply having your material in a flat surface, placing the drop of electrolyte on top, placing behind a graduated semicircle,take a photograph and measure the contact angle in Paint or whatever software you like. It works fine for us, measuring contact angles in ceramic coating on top of metal substrates and for graphene films on glass.
Hope it is useful.!
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