169 research outputs found
Growth saturation of unstable thin films on transverse-striped hydrophilic-hydrophobic micropatterns
Using three-dimensional numerical simulations, we demonstrate the growth
saturation of an unstable thin liquid film on micropatterned
hydrophilic-hydrophobic substrates. We consider different transverse-striped
micropatterns, characterized by the total fraction of hydrophilic coverage and
the width of the hydrophilic stripes. We compare the growth of the film on the
micropatterns to the steady states observed on homogeneous substrates, which
correspond to a saturated sawtooth and growing finger configurations for
hydrophilic and hydrophobic substrates, respectively. The proposed
micropatterns trigger an alternating fingering-spreading dynamics of the film,
which leads to a complete suppression of the contact line growth above a
critical fraction of hydrophilic stripes. Furthermore, we find that increasing
the width of the hydrophilic stripes slows down the advancing front, giving
smaller critical fractions the wider the hydrophilic stripes are. Using
analytical approximations, we quantitatively predict the growth rate of the
contact line as a function of the covering fraction, and predict the threshold
fraction for saturation as a function of the stripe width.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure
Three-dimensional aspects of fluid flows in channels. II. Effects of Meniscus and Thin Film regimes on Viscous Fingers
We perform a three-dimensional study of steady state viscous fingers that
develop in linear channels. By means of a three-dimensional Lattice-Boltzmann
scheme that mimics the full macroscopic equations of motion of the fluid
momentum and order parameter, we study the effect of the thickness of the
channel in two cases. First, for total displacement of the fluids in the
channel thickness direction, we find that the steady state finger is
effectively two-dimensional and that previous two-dimensional results can be
recovered by taking into account the effect of a curved meniscus across the
channel thickness as a contribution to surface stresses. Secondly, when a thin
film develops in the channel thickness direction, the finger narrows with
increasing channel aspect ratio in agreement with experimental results. The
effect of the thin film renders the problem three-dimensional and results
deviate from the two-dimensional prediction.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure
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
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
Evaporation and Electrowetting of Sessile Droplets on Slippery Liquid-like Surfaces and Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces (SLIPS)
Sessile droplet evaporation underpins a wide range of applications from inkjet printing to coating. However, drying times can be variable and contact-line pinning often leads to undesirable effects, such as ring stain formation. Here, we show voltage programmable control of contact angles during evaporation on two pinning-free surfaces. We use an electrowetting-on-dielectric approach and Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous (SLIP) and Slippery Omniphobic Covalently Attached Liquid-Like (SOCAL) surfaces to achieve a constant contact angle mode of evaporation. We report evaporation sequences and droplet lifetimes across a broad range of contact angles from 105°–67°. The values of the contact angles during evaporation are consistent with expectations from electrowetting and the Young-Lippman equation. The droplet contact areas reduce linearly in time, and this provides estimates of diffusion coefficients close to the expected literature value. We further find that the total time of evaporation over the broad contact angle range studied is only weakly dependent on the value of the contact angle. We conclude that on these types of slippery surfaces, droplet lifetimes can be predicted and controlled by the droplet’s volume and physical properties (density, diffusion coefficient, and vapor concentration difference to the vapor phase) largely independent of the precise value of contact angle. These results are relevant to applications, such as printing, spraying, coating, and other processes, where controlling droplet evaporation and drying is important
Dynamics of gravity driven three-dimensional thin films on hydrophilic-hydrophobic patterned substrates
We investigate numerically the dynamics of unstable gravity driven
three-dimensional thin liquid films on hydrophilic-hydrophobic patterned
substrates of longitudinal stripes and checkerboard arrangements. The thin film
can be guided preferentially on hydrophilic longitudinal stripes, while fingers
develop on adjacent hydrophobic stripes if their width is large enough. On
checkerboard patterns, the film fingering occurs on hydrophobic domains, while
lateral spreading is favoured on hydrophilic domains, providing a mechanism to
tune the growth rate of the film. By means of kinematical arguments, we
quantitatively predict the growth rate of the contact line on checkerboard
arrangements, providing a first step towards potential techniques that control
thin film growth in experimental setups.Comment: 30 pages, 12 figure
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
Rotation-disk connection for very low mass and substellar objects in the Orion Nebula Cluster
Angular momentum loss requires magnetic interaction between the forming star
and both the circumstellar disk and the magnetically driven outflows. In order
to test these predictions many authors have investigated a rotation-disk
connection in pre-main sequence objects with masses larger than about 0.4Msun.
For brown dwarfs this connection was not investigated as yet because there are
very few samples available. We aim to extend this investigation well down into
the substellar regime for our large sample of BDs in the Orion Nebula Cluster,
for which we have recently measured rotational periods. In order to investigate
a rotation-disk correlation, we derived near-infrared (NIR) excesses for a
sample of 732 periodic variables in the Orion Nebula Cluster with masses
ranging between 1.5-0.02 Msun and whose IJHK colors are available.
Circumstellar NIR excesses were derived from the Delta[I-K] index. We performed
our analysis in three mass bins.We found a rotation-disk correlation in the
high and intermediate mass regime, in which objects with NIR excess tend to
rotate slower than objects without NIR excess. Interestingly, we found no
correlation in the substellar regime. A tight correlation between the
peak-to-peak (ptp) amplitude of the rotational modulation and the NIR excess
was found however for all objects with available ptp values. We discuss
possible scenarios which may explain the lack of rotation-disk connection in
the substellar mass regime. One possible reason could be the strong dependence
of the mass accretion rate on stellar mass in the investigated mass range.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication "Astronomy and
Astrophysics
Easier sieving through narrower pores: fluctuations and barrier crossing in flow-driven polymer translocation
We show that the injection of polymer chains into nanochannels becomes easier
as the channel becomes narrower. This counter intuitive result arises because
of a decrease in the diffusive time scale of the chains with increasing
confinement. The results are obtained by extending the de Gennes blob model of
confined polymers, and confirmed by hybrid molecular dynamics -
lattice-Boltzmann simulations.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Length-dependent translocation of polymers through nanochannels
We consider the flow-driven translocation of single polymer chains through
nanochannels. Using analytical calculations based on the de Gennes blob model
and mesoscopic numerical simulations, we estimate the threshold flux for the
translocation of chains of different number of monomers. The translocation of
the chains is controlled by the competition between entropic and hydrodynamic
effects, which set a critical penetration length for the chain before it can
translocate through the channel. We demonstrate that the polymers show two
different translocation regimes depending on how their length under confinement
compares to the critical penetration length. For polymer chains longer than the
threshold, the translocation process is insensitive to the number of monomers
in the chain as predicted in Sakaue {\it et al.}, {\it Euro. Phys. Lett.}, {\bf
72} 83 (2005). However, for chains shorter than the critical length we show
that the translocation process is strongly dependent on the length of the
chain. We discuss the possible relevance of our results to biological
transport.Comment: To appear in Soft Matter. 10 pages 9 Figure
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