Spontaneous Breakdown of Superhydrophobicity

Abstract

In some cases water droplets can completely wet micro-structured superhydrophobic surfaces. The {\it dynamics} of this rapid process is analyzed by ultra-high-speed imaging. Depending on the scales of the micro-structure, the wetting fronts propagate smoothly and circularly or -- more interestingly -- in a {\it stepwise} manner, leading to a growing {\it square-shaped} wetted area: entering a new row perpendicular to the direction of front propagation takes milliseconds, whereas once this has happened, the row itself fills in microseconds ({\it ``zipping''})

Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (1)

• Mesoscopic modeling of a two-phase flow in the presence of boundaries: the Contact Angle

Cited by in corpus (5)

• The collapse transition on superhydrophobic surfaces
• Introduction: Localized Structures in Dissipative Media: From Optics to Plant Ecology
• Dynamics of the spontaneous breakdown of superhydrophobicity
• Imbibition through an array of triangular posts
• Regimes of Wetting Transitions on Superhydrophobic Textures Conditioned by Energy of Receding Contact Lines