Controlled cavity collapse: scaling laws of drop formation

The formation of transient cavities at liquid interfaces occurs in an immense variety of natural processes, among which the bursting of surface bubbles and the impact of a drop on a liquid pool are salient. The collapse of a surface liquid cavity is a well documented natural process that leads to the ejection of a thin and fast jet. Droplets generated through this process can be one order of magnitude smaller than the cavity's aperture, and they are consequently of interest in drop on demand inkjet applications. In this work, the controlled formation and collapse of a liquid cavity is analyzed, and the conditions for minimizing the resulting size and number of ejected drops are determined. The experimental and numerical models are simple and consist of a liquid reservoir, a nozzle plate with the discharge orifice, and a moving piston actuated by single half-sine-shaped pull-mode pulses. The size of the jetted droplet is described by a physical model resulting in a scaling law that is numerically and experimentally validated

Electrostatic charging of jumping droplets

With the broad interest in and development of superhydrophobic surfaces for self-cleaning, condensation heat transfer enhancement and anti-icing applications, more detailed insights on droplet interactions on these surfaces have emerged. Specifically, when two droplets coalesce, they can spontaneously jump away from a superhydrophobic surface due to the release of excess surface energy. Here we show that jumping droplets gain a net positive charge that causes them to repel each other mid-flight. We used electric fields to quantify the charge on the droplets and identified the mechanism for the charge accumulation, which is associated with the formation of the electric double layer at the droplet–surface interface. The observation of droplet charge accumulation provides insight into jumping droplet physics as well as processes involving charged liquid droplets. Furthermore, this work is a starting point for more advanced approaches for enhancing jumping droplet surface performance by using external electric fields to control droplet jumping.United States. Dept. of Energy. Office of Basic Energy Sciences (Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center Award DE-FG02-09ER46577)United States. Office of Naval ResearchNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (Major Research Instrumentation Grant for Rapid Response Research (MRI- RAPID))National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award ECS-0335765)National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Grant 1122374