We are excited to announce that Krzysztof Wieczerzak, a member of the RADISH team, is a co-author of a newly released research preprint on arXiv, titled “Exploring Wetting and Optical Properties of CuAg Alloys via Surface Texture Morphology Analysis.” This work, submitted in February 2026, investigates how the surface texture and composition of copper-silver thin films influence their wetting behavior and optical characteristics — key properties for materials used in advanced electrical, electronic and surface-engineering applications.
In the study, the authors deposited thin films of pure Cu, pure Ag, and CuAg alloys onto textured silicon using magnetron sputtering and analyzed how features like surface texture morphology affect the contact angle (a measure of how liquids interact with the surface) and optical behaviour. By applying modern data mining and machine learning techniques, the team identified strong relationships between geometric surface descriptors (such as fractal dimensions) and wetting phenomena, showing how surface order/disorder evolves during film growth. They also developed a predictive machine-learning model that can estimate water contact angles from texture and optical parameters with high accuracy; both the model and its Python code have been made publicly available. This research paves the way toward targeted engineering of surface textures to achieve tailored material performance in applications where control over wetting and optical properties is crucial.
We congratulate the authors on this promising contribution and look forward to further developments as this work progresses toward peer-reviewed publication.
Link to full article: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12848