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The transport of small quantities of liquid on a solid surface is inhibited by the resistance to motion caused by the contact between the liquid and the solid. To overcome such resistance, motion can be externally driven through gradients…
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,…
Droplet motion on surfaces influences phenomena as diverse as microfluidic liquid handling, printing technology and micro-organism migration. Typically, droplet motion is achieved by inducing energy gradients on a substrate or flow on the…
Droplets on rough surfaces can exhibit various stationary states that are crucial for designing hydrophobic materials and enabling directional liquid transport. Here we introduce a phase-field saddle dynamics method to construct the…
Making liquid droplets move spontaneously on solid surfaces is a key challenge in lab-on-chip and heat exchanger technologies. The best-known mechanism, a wettability gradient, does not generally move droplets rapidly enough and cannot…
How to make small liquid droplets move spontaneously and directionally on solid surfaces is a challenge in lab-on-chip technologies, DNA analysis, and heat exchangers. The best-known mechanism, a wettability gradient, does not move droplets…
The controlled handling of liquids and colloidal suspensions as they interact with surfaces, targeting a broad palette of related functionalities, is of great importance in science, technology, and nature. When small liquid volumes need to…
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…
The superhydrophobic leaves of a lotus plant and other natural surfaces with self-cleaning function have been studied intensively for the development of artificial biomimetic surfaces. Surface roughness generated by hierarchical structures…
We show how anisotropic, grooved features facilitate the trapping and directed transport of droplets on lubricated, liquid-shedding surfaces. Capillary action pins droplets to topographic surface features, enabling transport along the…
Most passive droplet transport strategies rely on spatial variations of material properties to drive droplet motion, leading to gradient-based mechanisms with intrinsic length scales that limit the droplet velocity or the transport…
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,…
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…
Self-propelled droplet jumping during condensation has attractive prospects for energy harvesting, water collection and thermal management, but its real-life applications are greatly limited to the challenge of enabling a sustainable…
Under partial wetting conditions, making a substrate uniformly rougher enhances the wetting characteristics of the corresponding smooth substrate {--} hydrophilic systems become even more hydrophilic and hydrophobic systems even more…
Earlier works found out spontaneous directional motion of liquid droplets on hydrophilic conical surfaces, however, not hydrophobic case. Here we show that droplets on any surface may take place spontaneous directional motion without…
Electrowetting on textured and lubricant infused surfaces is conventionally expected to promote enhanced droplet spreading by reducing apparent contact angles. Contrary to this intuition, we report rapid tangential droplet ejection at…
Examples of fluid flows driven by undulating boundaries are found in nature across many different length scales. Even though different driving mechanisms have evolved in distinct environments, they perform essentially the same function:…
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…
Surface-bound electric charge on polymer materials can strongly influence droplet behaviour and solid-liquid charge transfer, but the mechanisms and the means to control these effects remain unclear. In this work, we systematically…