Spontaneous Breakdown of Superhydrophobicity
Fluid Dynamics
2009-11-13 v3 Soft Condensed Matter
Statistical Mechanics
Pattern Formation and Solitons
Abstract
In some cases water droplets can completely wet micro-structured superhydrophobic surfaces. The {\it dynamics} of this rapid process is analyzed by ultra-high-speed imaging. Depending on the scales of the micro-structure, the wetting fronts propagate smoothly and circularly or -- more interestingly -- in a {\it stepwise} manner, leading to a growing {\it square-shaped} wetted area: entering a new row perpendicular to the direction of front propagation takes milliseconds, whereas once this has happened, the row itself fills in microseconds ({\it ``zipping''})
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0705.4210,
title = {Spontaneous Breakdown of Superhydrophobicity},
author = {Mauro Sbragaglia and Alisia M. Peters and Christophe Pirat and Bram M. Borkent and Rob G. H. Lammertink and Matthias Wessling and Detlef Lohse},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0705.4210},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters