Surfactants in paint agent". Surfactants are compounds that lower the surface tension of a liquid, the interfacial tension between two liquids, or the interfacial tension between a liquid and a solid. In solutions this behavior is known as wetting, and it occurs as a result of surfactants adsorbing to the air/water interface. Soluble surfactants are also capable of forming micelles and other aggregate structures in solution, leading to a stabilizing effect in latex paints. Surfactants in paint are used to change many end properties of a dried paint, as well as to emulsify paints in their liquid state. Surfactants affect a wide array
Dewetting Dewetting In fluid mechanics, dewetting is one of the processes that can occur at a solid–liquid or liquid–liquid interface. Generally, dewetting describes the process of retraction of a fluid from a non-wettable surface it was forced to cover. The opposite process—spreading of a liquid on a substrate—is called wetting. The factor determining the spontaneous spreading and dewetting for a drop of liquid placed on a solid substrate with ambient gas, is the so-called spreading coefficient S: formula_1 where formula_2 is the solid-gas surface tension, formula_3 is the solid-liquid surface tension and formula_4 is the liquid-gas surface tension (measured for the