Abstract
Despite surface energies dictating complete wetting, it has been classically observed that volatile alkanes do not spread completely on glass substrates, and faster evaporation rates lead to higher contact angles. Here we investigate how substrate thickness influences this behavior. For sufficiently thin substrates, we find alkanes evaporate slower and display higher apparent contact angles, at odds with the typical explanations involving just evaporation, capillarity, and viscous dissipation. We derive the droplet temperature distribution and use it as part of a criteria to show that thermal Marangoni contraction plays a significant role in establishing droplet shape on thin substrates.
- Received 29 November 2020
- Accepted 3 May 2021
- Corrected 17 August 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.024502
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Corrections
17 August 2022
Correction: The previously published Fig._3(c) contained errors in the -axis numbers and has been set right.