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Spontaneous charging affects the motion of sliding drops

Authors :
Xiaomei Li
Pravash Bista
Amy Z. Stetten
Henning Bonart
Maximilian T. Schür
Steffen Hardt
Francisco Bodziony
Holger Marschall
Alexander Saal
Xu Deng
Rüdiger Berger
Stefan A. L. Weber
Hans-Jürgen Butt
Source :
Nature Physics
Publication Year :
2022
Publisher :
Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2022.

Abstract

Water drops moving on surfaces are not only an everyday phenomenon seen on windows but also form an essential part of many industrial processes. Previous understanding is that drop motion is dictated by viscous dissipation and activated dynamics at the contact line. Here we demonstrate that these two effects cannot fully explain the complex paths of sliding or impacting drops. To accurately determine the forces experienced by moving drops, we imaged their trajectory when sliding down a tilted surface, and applied the relevant equations of motion. We found that drop motion on low-permittivity substrates is substantially influenced by electrostatic forces. Our findings confirm that electrostatics must be taken into consideration for the description of the motion of water, aqueous electrolytes and ethylene glycol on hydrophobic surfaces. Our results are relevant for improving the control of drop motion in many applications, including printing, microfluidics, water management and triboelectric nanogenerators.

Subjects

Subjects :
General Physics and Astronomy

Details

ISSN :
17452481 and 17452473
Volume :
18
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Nature Physics
Accession number :
edsair.doi.dedup.....c92bff646064e8bfd1356619a890fb27
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01563-6