Wetting properties of nanostructured surfaces

Swift heavy ion irradiation is a powerful tool to tailor surfaces under controlled conditions at a nanometric scale. The growing importance of nanostructured surfaces for a wide variety of applications and fundamental investigations is now well established. In this paper I will mainly discuss the interest of such surfaces for investigations concerning solid–liquid interfaces. The role played by topographical defects on wetting properties of solid surfaces, and both the dissipative and the confinement effects on the interface will be demonstrated by simple examples.