How droplets nucleate and grow on liquids and liquid impregnated surfaces
Name
Varanasi_How droplets.pdf
Size
2.32 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
3769c6eddf5e63973e4925c97ca06094
Author(s)
Anand, Sushant
Rykaczewski, Konrad
Beysens, Daniel
Varanasi, Kripa K.
Bengaluru Subramanyam, Srinivas
Date Issued
October 2014
Journal
Soft Matter
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry
Citation
Anand, Sushant, Konrad Rykaczewski, Srinivas Bengaluru Subramanyam, Daniel Beysens, and Kripa K. Varanasi. “How Droplets Nucleate and Grow on Liquids and Liquid Impregnated Surfaces.” Soft Matter 11, no. 1 (2015): 69–80.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Condensation on liquids has been studied extensively in context of breath figure templating, materials synthesis and enhancing heat transfer using liquid impregnated surfaces. However, the mechanics of nucleation and growth on liquids remains unclear, especially on liquids that spread on the condensate. By examining the energy barriers of nucleation, we provide a framework to choose liquids that can lead to enhanced nucleation. We show that due to limits of vapor sorption within a liquid, nucleation is most favoured at the liquid–air interface and demonstrate that on spreading liquids, droplet submergence within the liquid occurs thereafter. We provide a direct visualization of the thin liquid profile that cloaks the condensed droplet on a liquid impregnated surface and elucidate the vapour transport mechanism in the liquid films. Finally, we show that although the viscosity of the liquid does not affect droplet nucleation, it plays a crucial role in droplet growth.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1039/c4sm01424c
