Related papers: Role of uncrosslinked chains in droplets dynamics …
Drops in contact with swollen, elastomeric substrates can induce a capillary-mediated phase separation in wetting ridges. Using laser scanning confocal microscopy, we visualize phase separation of oligomeric silicone oil from a crosslinked…
Anisotropically wetting substrates enable useful control of droplet behavior across a range of applications. Usually, these involve chemically or physically patterning the substrate surface, or applying gradients in properties like…
We report an experimental investigation of the spontaneous motion of liquid droplets on soft gels with a crosslinking gradient. By systematically adjusting the spatial difference in crosslinking density, we observed that millimeter-sized…
Soft materials are ubiquitous in technological applications that require deformability, for instance, in flexible, water-repellent coatings. However, the wetting properties of pre-strained soft materials are only beginning to be explored.…
Understanding the dynamics of drops on polymer-coated surfaces is crucial for optimizing applications such as self-cleaning materials or microfluidic devices. While the static and dynamic properties of deposited drops have been well…
We present a molecular dynamics study of the motion of cylindrical polymer droplets on striped surfaces. We first consider the equilibrium properties of droplets on different surfaces, we show that for small stripes the Cassie-Baxter…
When a liquid droplet completely wets a hard substrate, its spreading dynamics follow Tanner's law, with the droplet radius growing as the one-tenth power of time. Here, we investigate how these dynamics change when silicone oil droplets…
Droplet coalescence is ubiquitous in nature and the same time key to various technologies, such as inkjet printing. Here, we report on the coalescence of polymer droplets with different chain lengths coalescing on substrates of different…
A recent study has demonstrated that phase separation in binary liquid mixtures is arrested in the presence of elastic networks and can lead to a nearly uniformly-sized distribution of the dilute-phase droplets. At longer timescales, these…
This research introduces a new drop fluidics, which uses a deformable and stretchable elastomeric film as the platform, instead of the commonly used rigid supports. Such a soft film impregnated with magnetic particles can be modulated with…
We consider a three-dimensional network of aqueous droplets joined by single lipid bilayers to form a cohesive, tissue-like material. The droplets in these networks can be programmed to have distinct osmolarities so that osmotic gradients…
The surface tension of partially wetting droplets deforms soft substrates. These deformations are usually localized to a narrow region near the contact line, forming a so-called `elastocapillary ridge.' When a droplet slides along a…
The spontaneous migration of droplets on conical fibers is studied experimentally by depositing silicone oil droplets onto conical glass fibers. Their motion is recorded using optical microscopy and analysed to extract the relevant…
We study the influence of chain stiffness on droplet flow in a nano-channel, coated with semiflexible hydrophobic polymers by means of non-equilibrium molecular-dynamics simulations. The studied system is then a moving droplet in the slit…
We present a comprehensive study of water drops sliding down chemically heterogeneous surfaces formed by a periodic pattern of alternating hydrophobic and hydrophilic stripes. Drops are found to undergo a stick-slip motion whose average…
Liquid droplets usually wet smooth and homogeneous substrates isotropically. Recent research works have revealed that droplets sit, slide and spread anisotropically on uniaxially stretched soft substrates, showing an enhanced wettability…
Using multispeckle x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy, we have measured the slow, wave-vector dependent dynamics of concentrated, disordered nanoemulsions composed of silicone oil droplets in water. The intermediate scattering function…
Polymer gels are comprised of a three-dimensional, cross-linked network that can typically withstand the mechanical deformation associated with both swelling and de-swelling. Thus, gels can be designed with smart behaviors that require both…
Living and engineered systems rely on the stable coexistence of two interspersed liquid phases. Yet surface tension drives their complete separation. Here we show that stable droplets of uniform and tuneable size can be produced through…
We investigate the dynamics of alginate gels, an important class of biopolymer-based viscoelastic materials, by combining mechanical tests and non-conventional, time-resolved light scattering methods. Two relaxation modes are observed upon…