Electrostatic charging of jumping droplets
Name
Electrostatic Charging of Jumping Droplets.pdf
Description
Main article, figures, and supplementary information
Size
3.13 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
2486ad7a109b9d7436e1f70a2489d733
Author(s)
Miljkovic, Nenad
Enright, Ryan
Wang, Evelyn N.
Preston, Daniel John
Date Issued
September 2013
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Miljkovic, Nenad, Daniel J. Preston, Ryan Enright, and Evelyn N. Wang. “Electrostatic Charging of Jumping Droplets.” Nature Communications 4 (September 27, 2013).
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
With the broad interest in and development of superhydrophobic surfaces for self-cleaning, condensation heat transfer enhancement and anti-icing applications, more detailed insights on droplet interactions on these surfaces have emerged. Specifically, when two droplets coalesce, they can spontaneously jump away from a superhydrophobic surface due to the release of excess surface energy. Here we show that jumping droplets gain a net positive charge that causes them to repel each other mid-flight. We used electric fields to quantify the charge on the droplets and identified the mechanism for the charge accumulation, which is associated with the formation of the electric double layer at the droplet–surface interface. The observation of droplet charge accumulation provides insight into jumping droplet physics as well as processes involving charged liquid droplets. Furthermore, this work is a starting point for more advanced approaches for enhancing jumping droplet surface performance by using external electric fields to control droplet jumping.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms3517
