Wetting on patchy, protein-like surfaces

In this talk I will review the field recent progresses in trying to understand the work of adhesion for water on surfaces composed of hydrophobic and hydrophilic patches. The key fundamental question that will be addressed will be that on the additivity (or lack thereof) of the work of adhesion. A series of experiments will be presented to try to prove that the work of adhesion is, in fact, non-additive and that there is a significant structural component to it. In particular new resutls comparing patchy particles identical in everything but the morphology of the ligand shell will be presented. Recent literature will be discussed and novel water structure interfacial spectroscopy results will be shown and discussed.