Onset of Area-Dependent Dissipation in Droplet Spreading

Mark Ilton, Oliver Baeumchen, and Kari Dalnoki-Veress

Physical Review Letters 115 (2015)

Abstract

We probe the viscous relaxation of structured liquid droplets in the partial wetting regime using a diblock copolymer system. The relaxation time of the droplets is measured after a step change in temperature as a function of three tunable parameters: droplet size, equilibrium contact angle, and the viscosity of the fluid. Contrary to what is typically observed, the late-stage relaxation time does not scale with the radius of the droplet-rather, relaxation scales with the radius squared. Thus, the energy dissipation depends on the contact area of the droplet, rather than the contact line.

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† denotes student author.