Related papers: Dynamic Wettability Modulation of Textured, Soft a…
Silicone is frequently used as a model system to investigate and tune wetting on soft materials. Silicone is biocompatible and shows excellent thermal, chemical, and UV stability. Moreover, the mechanical properties of the surface can be…
Interfaces between a water droplet and a network of pillars produce eventually superhydrophobic, self-cleaning properties. Considering the surface fraction of the surface in interaction with water, it is possible to tune precisely the…
Electrowetting (EW) of water drops in ambient oil has found a wide range of applications including lab-on-a-chip devices, display screens, and variable focus lenses. The efficacy of all these applications is dependent on the contact angle…
The present study deals with the numerical as well as asymptotic analysis of the electrohydrodynamic interaction between two deformable droplets in a confined shear flow. Considering both the phases as leaky dielectric, we have performed…
Capillary interfaces subjected to impulsive forcing arise in many natural and technological systems, yet the pathway by which rapid substrate motion is converted into droplet detachment remains unclear. Here we study this process in a…
From hydrogels and plastics to liquid crystals, soft solids cover a wide array of synthetic and biological materials that play key enabling roles in advanced technologies such as 3D printing, soft robotics, wearable electronics,…
We present experiments which show that the partial wetting of droplets capped by taut elastic films is highly tunable. Adjusting the tension allows the contact angle and droplet morphology to be controlled. By exploiting these elastic…
Recent experiments with droplets impacting a macro-textured superhydrophobic surfaces revealed new regimes of bouncing with a remarkable reduction of the contact time. We present here a comprehensive numerical study that reveals the physics…
Elastic deformation of rigid materials with soft coatings (stratified materials) due to lubrication forces can also alter the interpretation of dynamic surface forces measurements and prevent contact formation between approaching surfaces.…
Understanding how water wets graphene is critical for predicting and controlling its behaviour in nanofluidic, sensing, and energy applications. A key measure of wetting is the contact angle made by a liquid droplet against the surface, yet…
Droplet(s) breakup and coalescence have been simulated by the finite volume/moving mesh interface tracking method (MMIT) with adaptive mesh refining and coarsening. In this method, the interface is zero-thickness and moves in a Lagrangian…
A key question in the interaction of droplets with lubricated and liquid-infused surfaces is what determines the apparent contact angle of droplets. Previous work has determined this using measured values of the geometry of the `skirt' --…
Drop deformation in fluid flows is investigated here as an exchange between the kinetic energy of the fluid and the surface energy of the drop. We show analytically that this energetic exchange is controlled only by the stretching (or…
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…
We consider the dynamics of thin two-dimensional viscous droplets on chemically heterogeneous surfaces moving under the combined effects of slip, mass transfer and capillarity. The resulting long-wave evolution equation for the droplet…
Freezing of water droplets placed on the bare and superhydrophobic surfaces of polymer wedges are studied both experimentally and computationally. Two-dimensional numerical calculations of the transient temperature field in a chilled…
We study the static and dynamic wetting of adaptive substrates using a mesoscopic hydrodynamic model for a liquid droplet on a solid substrate covered by a polymer brush. First, we show that on the macroscale Young's law still holds for the…
Liquid drops start spreading directly after brought into contact with a partial wetting substrate. Although this phenomenon involves a three-phase contact line, the spreading motion is very fast. We study the initial spreading dynamics of…
Biomolecules, such as proteins and RNAs, can phase separate in the cytoplasm of cells to form biomolecular condensates. Such condensates are liquid-like droplets that can wet biological surfaces such as membranes. Many molecules that…
Controlling interfaces of phase separating fluid mixtures is key to creating diverse functional soft materials. Traditionally, this is accomplished with surface-modifying chemical agents. Using experiment and theory, we study how mechanical…