Related papers: Driving Droplets by Curvi-Propulsion
In recent decades novel solid substrates have been designed which change their wettability in response to light or an electrostatic field. Here, we investigate a droplet on substrates with oscillating uniform wettability by varying minimium…
Recently, there is much interest in droplet condensation on soft or liquid/liquid-like substrates. Droplets can deform soft and liquid interfaces resulting in a wealth of phenomena not observed on hard, solid surfaces (e.g., increased…
Motivated by strategies for targeted microfluidic transport of droplets, we investigate how sessile droplets can be steered toward a preferred direction using travelling waves in substrate wettability or deformations of the substrate. To…
The Leidenfrost effect enables droplets to levitate above a solid surface, significantly reducing the resistance to droplet motion. In this study, a spiked surface is utilized to achieve fast directional transport of Leidenfrost droplets,…
We study chemically driven running droplets on a partially wetting solid substrate by means of coupled evolution equations for the thickness profile of the droplets and the density profile of an adsorbate layer. Two models are introduced…
We study the dynamics of a droplet moving on an inclined rough surface in the absence of inertial and viscous stress effects. In this case, the dynamics of the droplet is a purely geometric motion in terms of the wetting domain and the…
Jumping of coalescing condensate droplets from superhydrophobic surfaces is an interesting phenomenon which yields marked heat transfer enhancement over the more explored gravity-driven droplet removal mode in surface condensation, a phase…
Liquid drops on soft solids generate strong deformations below the contact line, resulting from a balance of capillary and elastic forces. The movement of these drops may cause strong, potentially singular dissipation in the soft solid.…
A new mechanism for the passive removal of drop on a horizontal surface is described that does not require pre-fabrication of a surface energy gradient. The method relies upon the preparation of alternate hydrophilic/hydrophobic stripes on…
Nanodroplets on chemically structured substrates move under the action of disjoining pressure induced forces. A detailed analysis of them shows that even in the absence of long-ranged lateral variations of the effective interface potential,…
From microfluidics to fog-harvesting applications, tiny droplets are transported along various solid substrates including hairs, threads, grooves, and other light structures. Driven by gravity, a droplet sliding along a vertical fiber is a…
Applications such as digital microfluidics and bio-diagnostics rely on droplet locomotion. A prominent example of such motion is durotaxis, a phenomenon that requires a stiffness gradient along a surface for the transport of liquids, cells,…
Capillary forces guide the motion of biomolecular condensates, water-borne insects, and breakfast cereal. These surface-mediated interactions can be harnessed to build units into materials with exotic properties deriving from mesoscale…
This letter reports on the femtosecond laser fabrication of gradient-wettability micro/nano- patterns on Si surfaces. The dynamics of directional droplet spreading on the surface tension gradients developed is systematically investigated…
The dropwise condensation underneath a horizontal super-hydrophobic surface having unidirectional wettability gradient is modeled with implication to enhance the rate of condensation. The mathematical model includes nucleation, growth by…
Diffusion across surfaces generally involves motion on a vibrating but otherwise stationary substrate. Here, using molecular dynamics, we show that a layered material such as graphene opens up a new mechanism for surface diffusion whereby…
We report here a fully atomistic molecular dynamics study on the dynamics of impact of water nanodroplets (100 {\AA} of diameter) at high velocities (from 1 up to 15 {\AA}/ps) against graphene targets. Our results show that tuning graphene…
Controlling the shape and position of moving and pinned droplets on a solid surface is an important feature often found in microfluidic applications. However, automating them, e.g., for high-throughput applications, does rarely involve…
Small droplets on slender conical fibers spontaneously move along the fiber due to capillary action. The droplet motion depends on the geometry of the cone, the surface wettability, the surface tension, the viscosity, and the droplet size.…
Here, we study the coalescence of two droplets that are moving in the same direction on a soft surface; the motion of the droplets is caused by a gradient in the surface stiffness. As reference, stationary coalescence of the same droplets…