Nanofluid Droplet Evaporation Kinetics and Wetting Dynamics on Flat Substrates

Abstract

An experimental investigation into the evaporation of sessile nanofluid droplets is reported in this paper. The effect of nano-particle addition on the evaporative behaviour is studied using ethanol and Titanium Oxide nano-particles. The results show that a distinct ‘stick-slip’ pinning behaviour is observed when nano-particles are added to the base liquid. Increasing the nano-particle concentration was found to enhance the ‘stick-slip’ behaviour. This behaviour is attributed to the effects of evaporatively driven particle accumulation near the contact line. This in turn leads to an increase in localised viscosity, and an enhancement of contact line pinning.