We investigated the dynamic evaporating behaviors of water droplet on superhydrophobic surfaces with micropillars.Our experimental data showed that receding contact angles of the water droplet increased with the decreasing of the scale of the micropillars during evaporation,even though the solid area fractions of the microstructured substrates remained constant.We also experimentally found that the critical contact diameters of the transition between the Cassie-Baxter and Wenzel states are affected not only by the geometrical parameters of the microstructures,but also by the initial volume of the water droplet.The measured critical pressure is consistent with the theoretical model,which validated the pressure-induced impalement mechanism for the wetting state transition.
Thousands of plant and animal species have been observed to have superhydrophobic surfaces that lead to various novel behaviors. These observations have inspired attempts to create artificial superhydrophobic surfaces, given that such surfaces have multitudinous applications. Superhydrophobicity is an enhanced effect of surface roughness and there are known relationships that correlate surface roughness and superhydrophobicity, based on the underlying physics. However, while these examples demonstrate the level of roughness they tell us little about the independence of this effect in terms of its scale. Thus, they are not capable of explaining why such naturally occurring surfaces commonly have micron-submicron sizes. Here we report on the discovery of a new relation, its physical basis and its experimental verification. The results reveal that scaling-down roughness into the micro-submicron range is a unique and elegant strategy to not only achieve superhydrophobicity but also to increase its stability against environmental disturbances. This new relation takes into account the previously overlooked but key fact that the accumulated line energy arising from the numerous solid-water-air intersections that can be distributed over the apparent contact area, when air packets are trapped at small scales on the surface, can dramatically increase as the roughness scale shrinks. This term can in fact become the dominant contributor to the surface energy and so becomes crucial for accomplishing superhydrophobicity. These findings guide fabrication of stable super water-repellant surfaces.
Static and dynamic wetting behaviors of sessile droplet on smooth,microstructured and micro/nanostructured surface under condensation condition are systematically studied.In contrast to the conventional droplet wetting on such natural materials by dropping,we demonstrate here that when dropwise condensation occurs,the sessile droplet will transit from the Cassie-Baxter wetting state to the Wenzel wetting state or partial Cassie-Baxter wetting state on the microstructured surface or the micro/nanostructured surface,which leads to a strong adhesion between the droplet and the substrate.In contrast,the apparent contact angle and the sliding angle on the smooth surface changes a little before and after the condensation because of small roughness.Theoretical analysis shows that the roughness factor controls the adhesion force of the droplet during condensation,and a theoretical model is constructed which will be helpful for us to understand the relationship between the adhesion force and the geometry of the surface.
We report on our study of the static and dynamic wetting property of hydrophobic surfaces with micro-and dual micro/nano-scale structures.Simulations based on the lattice Boltzmann method showed that the apparent contact angle of water droplets on hy-drophobic surfaces with micro-scale structures increases as solid area decreases,whereas dual micro/nano-scale structures not only increase surface hydrophobicity but also greatly stabilize the Cassie state of droplets.Droplets falling on a superhydrophobic surface distort and,depending of free energy,sometimes bounced on the surface before finally adhering to the surface.These phenomena are in agreement with experimental observations.Simulated results also show that micro/nano-scale surface structures can increase droplet rebound height,which depends on static apparent contact angle.
