Vibration sorting of small droplets on hydrophilic surface by asymmetric contact-line friction
2022 (English)In: PNAS Nexus, E-ISSN 2752-6542, Vol. 1, no 2, article id pgac027Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Droplet spreading and transport phenomenon is ubiquitous and has been studied by engineered surfaces with a variety of topographic features. To obtain a directional bias in dynamic wetting, hydrophobic surfaces with a geometrical asymmetry are generally used, attributing the directionality to one-sided pinning. Although the pinning may be useful for directional wetting, it usually limits the droplet mobility, especially for small volumes and over wettable surfaces. Here, we demonstrate a pinning-less approach to rapidly transport millimeter sized droplets on a partially wetting surface. Placing droplets on an asymmetrically structured surfaces with micron-scale roughness and applying symmetric horizontal vibration, they travel rapidly in one direction without pinning. The key, here, is to generate capillary-driven rapid contact-line motion within the time-scale of period of vibration. At the right regime where a friction factor local at the contact line dominates the rapid capillary motion, the asymmetric surface geometry can induce smooth and continuous contact-line movement back and forth at different speed, realizing directional motion of droplets even with small volumes over the wettable surface. We found that the translational speed is selective and strongly dependent on the droplet volume, oscillation frequency, and surface pattern properties, and thus droplets with a specific volume can be efficiently sorted out.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
National Academy of Sciences , 2022. Vol. 1, no 2, article id pgac027
Keywords [en]
asymmetric contact-line friction, droplet, hydrophilic surface, wetting
National Category
Fluid Mechanics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-348031DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac027ISI: 001063384200002Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85145036332OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-348031DiVA, id: diva2:1880888
Note
QC 20240702
2024-07-022024-07-022025-02-09Bibliographically approved