A viscous switch for liquid-liquid dewetting

The spontaneous dewetting of a liquid film from a solid surface occurs in many important processes, such as printing and microscale patterning. Experience suggests that dewetting occurs faster on surfaces of higher film repellency. Here, we show how, unexpectedly, a surrounding viscous phase can switch the overall dewetting speed so that films retract slower with increasing surface repellency. We present experiments and a hydrodynamic theory covering five decades of the viscosity ratio between the film and the surrounding phase. The timescale of dewetting is controlled by the geometry of the liquid-liquid interface close to the contact line and the viscosity ratio. At small viscosity ratio, dewetting is slower on low film-repellency surfaces due to a high dissipation at the edge of the receding film. This situation is reversed at high viscosity ratios, leading to a slower dewetting on high film-repellency surfaces due to the increased dissipation of the advancing surrounding phase

Electrostatic control of dewetting dynamics

The stability of liquid films on surfaces are critically important in microscale patterning and the semiconductor industry. If the film is sufficiently thin it may spontaneously dewet from the surface. The timescale and rate of dewetting depend on the film repellency of the surface and the properties of the liquid. Therefore, control over the repellency requires modifying surface chemistry and liquid properties to obtain the desired rate of film retraction. Here, we report how the dynamics of a receding thin liquid stripe to a spherical cap droplet can be controlled by programming surface repellency through a non-contact electrostatic method. We observe excellent agreement between the expected scaling of the dynamics for a wide range of voltage-selected final contact angles. Our results provide a method of controlling the dynamics of dewetting with high precision and locality relevant to printing and directed templating

Bubble control, levitation and manipulation using dielectrophoresis

Bubbles attached to surfaces are ubiquitous in nature and in industry. However, bubbles are problematic in important technologies, including causing damage to the operation of microfluidic devices and being parasitic during heat transfer processes, so considerable efforts have been made to develop mechanical and electrical methods to remove bubbles from surfaces. In this work liquid dielectrophoresis is used to force a captive air bubble to detach away from an inverted solid surface and, crucially, the detached bubble is then held stationary in place below the surface at a distance controlled by the voltage. In this “levitated” state the bubble is separated from the surface by liquid layer with a voltage-selected thickness at which the dielectrophoresis force exactly counterbalances the gravitational buoyancy force. The techniques described here provide exceptional command over repeatable cycles of bubble detachment, levitation, and re-attachment. A theoretical analysis is presented that explains the observed detachment-reattachment hysteresis in which bubble levitation is maintained with voltages an order of magnitude lower than those used to create detachment. Our precision surface bubble removal and control concepts are relevant to situations such as nucleate boiling and micro-gravity environments, and offer an approach towards "wall-less" bubble microfluidic devices

An acoustic on-chip goniometer for room temperature macromolecular crystallography

This paper describes the design, development and succesful use of an on-chip goniometer for room-temperature macromolecular crystallography via acoustically induced rotations. We present for the first time a low cost, rate-tunable, acoustic actuator for randomised in-fluid sample orientation and its utilisation for protein structure determination on a synchrotron beamline. The device enables the efficient collection of diffraction data via a rotation method from a sample within a surface confined droplet. This method facillitates efficient macromolecular structural data acquisition in fluid environments for dynamical studies

The dewetting of a liquid film into a single drop

High speed microscopic imaging of droplets, dynamic contact angle and height and width measurements derived from the time dependent images of the time evolution of the droplet profiles. Spreadsheets of data associated with the publication: EDWARDS, A.M.J., LEDESMA-AGUILAR, R., NEWTON, M.I., BROWN, C.V., MCHALE, G., 2016. Not spreading in reverse: The dewetting of a liquid film into a single drop. Science Advances 2. e1600183