Universality of breath figures on two-dimensional surfaces: an experimental study

Abstract

Droplet condensation on surfaces produces patterns, called breath figures. Their evolution into self-similar structures is a classical example of self-organization. It is described by a scaling theory with scaling functions whose universality has recently been challenged by numerical work. Here, we provide a thorough experimental testing, where we inspect substrates with vastly different chemical properties, stiffness, and condensation rates. We critically survey the size distributions, and the related time-asymptotic scaling of droplet number and surface coverage. In the time-asymptotic regime they admit a data collapse: the data for all substrates and condensation rates lie on universal scaling functions.

References in corpus (1)

• Breath Figures: Nucleation, Growth, Coalescence, and the Size Distribution of Droplets

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Common Packing Patterns for Jammed Particles of Different Power Size Distributions
• Soft Condensation