Rectification of Mobile Leidenfrost Droplets by Planar Ratchets

The self‐transportation of mobile Leidenfrost droplets with well‐defined direction and velocity on millimetric ratchets is one of the most representative and spectacular phenomena in droplet dynamics. Despite extensive progress in the ability to control the spatiotemporal propagation of droplets, it remains elusive how the individual ratchet units, as well as the interactions within their arrays, are translated into the collective droplet dynamics. Here, simple planar ratchets characterized by uniform height normal to the surface are designed. It is revealed that on planar ratchets, the transport dynamics of Leidenfrost droplets is dependent not only on individual units, but also on the elegant coordination within their arrays dictated by their topography. The design of planar ratchets enriches the fundamental understanding of how the surface topography is translated into dynamic and collective droplet transport behaviors, and also imparts higher applicability in microelectromechanical system based fluidic devices.     

Length Scale Selects Directionality of Droplets on Vibrating Pillar Ratchet

Directional control of droplet motion at room temperature is of interest for applications such as microfluidic devices, self‐cleaning coatings, and directional adhesives. Here, arrays of tilted pillars ranging in height from the nanoscale to the microscale are used as structural ratchets to directionally transport water at room temperature. Water droplets deposited onto vibrating chips with a nanostructured ratchet move preferentially in the direction of the feature tilt while the opposite directionality is observed in the case of microstructured ratchets. This remarkable switch in directionality is consistent with changes in the contact angle hysteresis. To glean further insights into the length scale dependent asymmetric contact angle hysteresis, the contact lines formed by a nonvolatile room temperature ionic liquid placed onto the tilted pillar arrays were visualized and analyzed in situ in a scanning electron microscope. The ability to tune droplet directionality by merely changing the length scale of surface features all etched at the same tilt angle would be a versatile tool for manipulating multiphase flows and for selecting droplet directionality in other lap‐on‐chip applications.     

An engineered anisotropic nanofilm with unidirectional wetting properties

Anisotropic textured surfaces allow water striders to walk on water, butterflies to shed water from their wings and plants to trap insects and pollen. Capturing these natural features in biomimetic surfaces is an active area of research. Here, we report an engineered nanofilm, composed of an array of poly(p-xylylene) nanorods, which demonstrates anisotropic wetting behaviour by means of a pin-release droplet ratchet mechanism. Droplet retention forces in the pin and release directions differ by up to 80 μN, which is over ten times greater than the values reported for other engineered anisotropic surfaces. The nanofilm provides a microscale smooth surface on which to transport microlitre droplets, and is also relatively easy to synthesize by a bottom-up vapour-phase technique. An accompanying comprehensive model successfully describes the film's anisotropic wetting behaviour as a function of measurable film morphology parameters.     

Chemical transfection of cells in picoliter aqueous droplets in fluorocarbon oil

The manipulation of cells inside water-in-oil droplets is essential for high-throughput screening of cell-based assays using droplet microfluidics. Cell transfection inside droplets is a critical step involved in functional genomics studies that examine in situ functions of genes using the droplet platform. Conventional water-in-hydrocarbon oil droplets are not compatible with chemical transfection due to its damage to cell viability and extraction of organic transfection reagents from the aqueous phase. In this work, we studied chemical transfection of cells encapsulated in picoliter droplets in fluorocarbon oil. The use of fluorocarbon oil permitted high cell viability and little loss of the transfection reagent into the oil phase. We varied the incubation time inside droplets, the DNA concentration, and the droplet size. After optimization, we were able to achieve similar transfection efficiency in droplets to that in the bulk solution. Interestingly, the transfection efficiency increased with smaller droplets, suggesting effects from either the microscale confinement or the surface-to-volume ratio.     

Sequential Coalescence Enabled Two‐Step Microreactions in Triple‐Core Double‐Emulsion Droplets Triggered by an Electric Field

Advances in microfluidic emulsification have enabled the generation of exquisite multiple‐core droplets, which are promising structures to accommodate microreactions. An essential requirement for conducting reactions is the sequential coalescence of the multiple cores encapsulated within these droplets, therefore, mixing the reagents together in a controlled sequence. Here, a microfluidic approach is reported for the conduction of two‐step microreactions by electrically fusing three cores inside double‐emulsion droplets. Using a microcapillary glass device, monodisperse water‐in‐oil‐in‐water droplets are fabricated with three compartmented reagents encapsulated inside. An AC electric field is then applied through a polydimethylsiloxane chip to trigger the sequential mixing of the reagents, where the precise sequence is guaranteed by the discrepancy of the volume or conductivity of the inner cores. A two‐step reaction in each droplet is ensured by two times of core coalescence, which totally takes 20–40 s depending on varying conditions. The optimal parameters of the AC signal for the sequential fusion of the inner droplets are identified. Moreover, the capability of this technique is demonstrated by conducting an enzyme‐catalyzed reaction used for glucose detection with the double‐emulsion droplets. This technique should benefit a wide range of applications that require multistep reactions in micrometer scale.     

Inertia effects for slow forced scalar transfer from a sphere

Summary The effect of small, but nonzero Reynolds number on forced scalar transfer from a spherical particle is considered. The analysis applies to the case of low Peclet number Pe and requires a Prandtl/Schmidt number of order one. For a droplet it is shown that a) inertia does not effect the average transfer before terms of order Pe² and that b) the indirect effect of inertia, namely that due to drop deformation can be neglected at this order. The way in which these results were obtained makes it possible to apply them for encapsulated droplets and rigid spheres in slip flow, too.With 2 Figures     

High-Performance Unidirectional Manipulation of Microdroplets by Horizontal Vibration on Femtosecond Laser-Induced Slant Microwall Arrays

The high-performance unidirectional manipulation of microdroplets is crucial for many vital applications including water collection and bioanalysis. Among several actuation methods (e.g., electric, magnetic, light, and thermal actuation), mechanical vibration is pollution-free and biocompatible. However, it suffers from limited droplet movement mode, small volume range (V_Max/V_Min < 3), and low transport velocity (≤11.5 mm s⁻¹) because the droplet motion is a sliding state caused by the vertical vibration on the asymmetric hydrophobic microstructures. Here, an alternative strategy is proposed—horizontal vibration for multimode (rolling, bouncing/reverse bouncing, converging/diffusing, climbing, 90^o turning, and sequential transport), large-volume-range (V_Max/V_Min ≈ 100), and high-speed (≈22.86 mm s⁻¹) unidirectional microdroplet manipulation, which is ascribed to the rolling state on superhydrophobic slant microwall arrays (SMWAs) fabricated by the one-step femtosecond laser oblique ablation. The unidirectional transport mechanism relies on the variance of viscous resistance induced by the difference of contact area between the microdroplet and the slant microwalls. Furthermore, a circular, curved, and “L”-shaped SMWA is designed and fabricated for droplet motion with particular paths. Finally, sequential transport of large-volume-range droplets and chemical mixing microreaction of water-based droplets are demonstrated on the SMWA, which demonstrates the great potential in the field of microdroplet manipulation.     

Experimental and Theoretical Investigation on Rapid Evaporation of Ethanol Droplets and Kerosene Droplets During Depressurization

This paper reports an experimental and theoretical study of rapid evaporation of ethanol droplets and kerosene droplets during depressurization. For experimental method, an ethanol droplet or a kerosene droplet was suspended on a thermocouple, which was also used to measure the droplet center temperature transition. And the droplet shape variation was recorded by a high speed camera. A theoretical analysis was developed based on the heat balance to estimate the droplet center temperature transition, and the evaporation model proposed by Abramzon and Sirignano was used to describe the droplet vaporization. According to the experimental data and theoretical analysis, both of the environmental pressure and the initial droplet diameter have a prominent influence on the droplet temperature transition. Comparing the evaporation processes of ethanol droplets and kerosene droplets with water droplets, the ethanol droplets have the fastest evaporation rate, followed by water, and the evaporation rates of kerosene droplets are the slowest. Also it was found that a bubble can easily emerge within kerosene droplet, and its lifetime is more than 1 s.     

Droplet size and morphology analyses of dry liquid

Dry water is a free-flowing powder consisting of numerous solid particle-stabilized water droplets with typical sizes and volumes of 10^?6–10^?4 m and 10^?3–10³ pL, respectively. We describe the first characterization of dry water stabilized with hydrophobic silica nanoparticles, by using laser diffraction droplet size distribution analysis. The water droplet dimensions were measured to be a few tens of micrometers in air, by using the laser diffraction method. These dimensions correspond well with measurements by both laser diffraction and optical microscopy methods for a Pickering-type water-in-n-dodecane emulsion prepared by dispersing dry water in n-dodecane. Optical microscopy confirmed that the dry water consisted of flocs of non-spherical water droplets, and the flocs ranged in size from a few tens of micrometers to a few millimeters in air. On the basis of these results, the flocs of water droplets were proposed to dissociate into individual water droplets under the air blast during droplet size measurement by the laser diffraction method. It was also confirmed that pressurizing the dry water between two glass slides led to encapsulated water leaking from the silica nanoparticle shells. This on-demand pressure-sensitive water leak phenomenon shows a possible usage of the dry waters as a material delivery carrier.     

Unidirectional Wetting in the Hydrophobic Wenzel Regime

Unidirectional wetting surfaces can cause liquid droplets to flow/move in one direction while pinning them in the other directions, a feature that is useful for biosensing, adhesives, thermal management, and microfluidics. Such surfaces can be fabricated by employing structurally or chemically asymmetric nanostructures. While unidirectional wetting in the hydrophobic Wenzel regime had previously been observed on surfaces decorated with chemically asymmetric nanostructures, it has yet to be demonstrated on structurally asymmetric nanostructures. Based on the current understanding of the phenomenon, this can only be achieved using highly bent nanowires. Here, evidence to the contrary is provided by showing that mildly bent nanowires can also bring about unidirectional wetting in the hydrophobic Wenzel regime, even for contact angles beyond the superhydrophobic limit. Using NaCl precipitation, the unidirectional wetting mechanism is analyzed on a nanoscale level and it is found that the criteria for unidirectional wetting to take place in the hydrophobic Wenzel regime are different from that in the hydrophilic Wenzel regime. Moreover, it is revealed that slight wetting in the pinned direction can be caused by large scale deformation of high aspect ratio nanostructures during droplet spreading, which may be part of the reason behind previous observations of near‐unidirectional wetting on bent nanowires with high aspect ratios.     

Equations of the kinetics of droplet fragmentation in a high-speed gas flow

For the conditions of a high-speed gas flow, within the framework of the model of quasi-continuous fragmentation of a droplet due to the mechanism of gradient instability, a differential equation of mass loss has been obtained. Within the approximation of the droplet sphericity, the law of variation of its mass, which depends on droplet acceleration by the gas stream, as well as the conditions and time of complete fragmentation of the droplet, have been found. A differential equation for the quantity of torn off droplets, has been obtained. In the event of equality between the rates of dispersion and relaxation equalization of the droplet and gas flow velocities, the size distribution functions of the number and mass of torn off droplets, as well as the values of the modal radius and total number of torn off droplets, have been found.     

Sessile droplet formation in the laser-induced forward transfer of liquids: A time-resolved imaging study

The formation process of sessile droplets in the laser-induced forward transfer of aqueous solutions was analyzed through time-resolved imaging. At the irradiation conditions which lead to the deposition of well-defined droplets, a cavitation bubble is generated in the laser irradiated area. Such bubble evolves into a high-speed liquid jet which propagates towards the receptor solid substrate. Once the jet impinges on the receptor substrate, liquid gently starts accumulating on the impact position, and the growth of a sessile droplet initiates. In a first stage, which only lasts a few microseconds, the forming droplet suffers a fast spreading process. Then, the jet continues feeding the forming droplet for some hundreds of microseconds, but the droplet diameter remains constant, and thus the contact angle increases. Finally, liquid feeding stops due to jet breakup, and the sessile droplet initiates a slow relaxation process in which its contact angle diminishes and its diameter increases. This deposition process results in the deposition of a single sessile droplet up to donor film-receptor substrate distances of the order of the millimeter. At higher separations, satellite droplets appear, and at even higher separations only randomly distributed small droplets are deposited.     

A Microfluidic Strategy for Controllable Generation of Water‐in‐Water Droplets as Biocompatible Microcarriers

Droplet microfluidics has been widely applied in functional microparticles fabricating, tissue engineering, and drug screening due to its high throughput and great controllability. However, most of the current droplet microfluidics are dependent on water‐in‐oil (W/O) systems, which involve organic reagents, thus limiting their broader biological applications. In this work, a new microfluidic strategy is described for controllable and high‐throughput generation of monodispersed water‐in‐water (W/W) droplets. Solutions of polyethylene glycol and dextran are used as continuous and dispersed phases, respectively, without any organic reagents or surfactants. The size of W/W droplets can be precisely adjusted by changing the flow rate of dispersed and continuous phases and the valve switch cycle. In addition, uniform cell‐laden microgels are fabricated by introducing the alginate component and rat pancreatic islet (β‐TC6) cell suspension to the dispersed phase. The encapsulated islet cells retain high viability and the function of insulin secretion after cultivation for 7 days. The high‐throughput droplet microfluidic system with high biocompatibility is stable, controllable, and flexible, which can boost various chemical and biological applications, such as bio‐oriented microparticles synthesizing, microcarriers fabricating, tissue engineering, etc.     

Compound‐Droplet‐Pairs‐Filled Hydrogel Microfiber for Electric‐Field‐Induced Selective Release

The separate co‐encapsulation and selective controlled release of multiple encapsulants in a predetermined sequence has potentially important applications for drug delivery and tissue engineering. However, the selective controlled release of distinct contents upon one triggering event for most existing microcarriers still remains challenging. Here, novel microfluidic fabrication of compound‐droplet‐pairs‐filled hydrogel microfibers (C‐Fibers) is presented for two‐step selective controlled release under AC electric field. The parallel arranged compound droplets enable the separate co‐encapsulation of distinct contents in a single microfiber, and the release sequence is guaranteed by the discrepancy of the shell thickness or core conductivity of the encapsulated droplets. This is demonstrated by using a high‐frequency electric field to trigger the first burst release of droplets with higher conductivity or thinner shell, followed by the second release of the other droplets under low‐frequency electric field. The reported C‐Fibers provide novel multidelivery system for a wide range of applications that require controlled release of multiple ingredients in a prescribed sequence.     

Amplitude Equations for Large-Scale Marangoni Convection in a Liquid Layer with Insoluble Surfactant on Deformable Free Surface

The numerical simulation has been carried out to investigate the motion of a droplet initially near a wall under gravity and confirm the existence of the wall repulsive force on the droplet. The numerical model is developed based on a mass conservation level set algorithm to capture the surface deformation of the droplet. The results show that the wall repulsive force on the droplet initially near the wall plays an important role in the droplet falling process, and the viscosity force affects the oscillatory trajectory of the falling droplet. In addition, the mutual repulsive effect between two droplets is also studied by settling symmetrically two droplets, and the oscillatory mechanism of droplet motion is discussed as well.     

Mechanism of stabilization of location of a droplet cluster above the liquid-gas interface

We studied the influence of sizes of droplets, forming the ??droplet cluster?? dissipative structure, on their levitation height in the vapor-air flow, which appears when free surface of horizontal water layer is locally heated. A sharp decrease in the velocity of the vapor-air flow takes place at a distance from the surface comparable with the droplet diameter. Allowing for the aerodynamic nature of the droplet levitation, this peculiarity of the flow determines the high stability of location of the droplet cluster above the interface. Existence of droplets that are anomalously heavy in the slope of the Stokes levitation mechanism is described.     

Light scattering from deformed droplets and droplets with inclusions. I. Experimental results

We provide experimental results from the scattering of light by deformed liquid droplets and droplets with inclusions. The characterization of droplet deformation could lead to improved measurement of droplet size as measured by commercial aerodynamic particle-sizing instruments. The characterization of droplets with inclusions can be of importance in some industrial, occupational, and military aerosol monitoring situations. The nozzle assembly from a TSI Aerodynamic Particle Sizer was used to provide the accelerating flow conditions in which experimental data were recorded. A helium-neon laser was employed to generate the light-scattering data, and an externally triggered, pulsed copper vapor laser provided illumination for a droplet imaging system arranged orthogonal to the He-Ne scattering axis. The observed droplet deformation correlates well over a limited acceleration range with theoretical predictions derived from an analytical solution of the Navier-Stokes equation.     

Influences of support fibers on shapes of heptane/hexadecane droplets in reduced gravity

This paper describes analytical and experimental results related to the effects of support fibers on shapes of heptane/hexadecane mixture droplets (both burning and evaporating) in reduced gravity. The experimental results were obtained from large droplets (a few mm) investigated during the MSL-1 Flight of Spacelab. Theoretical (asymptotic) analyses are developed to predict droplet shapes. These analyses, which predict droplet shapes very well, illustrate important aspects of droplet shapes in a transparent fashion. The asymptotic theory shows that for small droplet-fiber contact angles, two spatial zones exist where droplet shapes behave differently. Away from a fiber, a droplet is essentially spherical. As the fiber is approached, however, deviations from spherical symmetry are significant. Previously developed analytical theory to predict macroscopic droplet shapes also compares well with experimental results. In addition, the experiments indicate that thin liquid films can form on support fibers. In the present experiments, these films apparently lead to transient formation of small droplets/bubbles on the support fibers at locations near the surface of a droplet.     

Interferometric laser imaging for droplet sizing: a method for droplet-size measurement in sparse spray systems

A full-field, time-resolved interferometric method for the characterization of sparse, polydisperse spray systems is reported. The method makes use of the angular intensity oscillations in the wide-angle forward-scatter region. A pulsed laser is used to illuminate a planar sheet through the spray, which is imaged, out of focus, from the 45°direction. The image consists of a set of out-of-focus spots, each of which represents an individual droplet, and superimposed on which is a set of fringes corresponding to the angular intensity oscillations of that droplet. Macrophotographic recording with high-resolution digitization for image analysis provides a full-field capability. The spatial frequency of fringes on each spot in the image plane is dependent on the diameter of the corresponding droplet in the object plane, and a simple geometric analysis is shown to be appropriate for the calculation of the spatial frequency of fringes as a function of droplet size. Images are analyzed automatically by a software suite that uses Gaussian blur, Canny edge detection, and Hough transforms to locate individual droplets in the image field. Fringe spatial frequency is then determined by least-squares fitting to a Chirp function. The method is applicable to droplets with diameters in the range of several millimeters to several hundred millimeters and number densities of up to 10(3) to 10(4). The accuracy of the method for droplet-size determination has been evaluated by measurements of monodisperse aerosols of known droplet size, and measurements of droplet-size distribution in a polydisperse aerosol produced by a gasoline fuel injector are also presented. An extension of the method, using high-speed photography to measure two components of velocity in addition to size and position, is discussed. A two-wavelength approach may also offer the capability to measure the concentration of model fuel additives in droplets, and the results of a feasibility study are described.     

Numerical Simulation of Unsteady Flows and Shape Oscillations in Liquid Droplets Induced by Deployment Needle Retraction

Retractable opposed needles are often used in reduced-gravity droplet combustion experiments to deploy droplets prior to ignition. Needle retraction induces droplet shape oscillations and internal flows that can have important effects on subsequent droplet behaviors. In the present paper, the unsteady flows and droplet shape oscillations associated with deployment needle retraction are investigated using the commercial CFD software package Fluent. A volume-of-fluid method with a second-order upwind scheme and a dual time stepping solver is employed to solve the conservation equations in 2-d and 3-d simulations of droplets prior to ignition. A moving-mesh method is employed to model needle movements. Calculations indicate that rapid needle retraction causes ligament formation between a droplet and a needle, with ligament breakage sometimes resulting in the formation of satellite droplets. Needle retraction also induces droplet shape oscillations that rapidly decay, though significant internal flows are predicted to remain within droplets even after droplet shape oscillations have damped to low levels. The calculations indicate that the initial needle spacing can have important effects on droplet shape oscillations and internal flow characteristics. Comparison of model predictions and experimental data is favorable.